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Emily Chamlee-Wright

Senior Research Scholar
Elbert H. Neese Professor of Economics , Beloit College
chamlee@beloit.edu

Biography

Emily Chamlee-Wright is a Mercatus senior research scholar and Elbert H. Neese Professor of Economics at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Her research interests include development economics and cultural economics. She writes and teaches about indigenous markets in Sub-Saharan Africa. Professor Chamlee-Wright is the lead researcher for Phase I of the Mercatus Center Katrina Project and the socio-cultural category of research.

Professor Chamlee-Wright's first book, The Cultural Foundations of Economic Development (Routledge 1997) was based on ethnographic research she conducted in the urban markets of Ghana. In 2000, Professor Chamlee-Wright published her second book, Culture and Enterprise, co-authored with Don Lavoie (Routledge 2000), which attempts to reconcile two distinct disciplinary fields: the study of culture and the study of markets. She is currently working on a book titled The Learning Society (University of Michigan Press), exploring the intersection between markets and social capital.

Professor Chamlee-Wright's more recent ethnographic work is a study of urban market women in Zimbabwe, documenting their strategies for economic survival and accumulation. In general, Professor Chamlee-Wright is interested in the ways in which cultural and market processes affect one another.

Professor Chamlee-Wright was a W.K. Kellogg National Leadership Fellow. She earned her PhD from George Mason University.

Articles, Commentary, and Publications

• Mercatus on Policy - Disastrous Uncertainty
• The Political, Economic, and Social Aspects of Katrina
• Community Resilience in New Orleans East: Deploying the Cultural Toolkit within a Vietnamese-American Community
• Church Provision for Club Goods and Community Redevelopment in New Orleans East
• Written Testimony on Rebuilding New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina Submitted to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
• The Long Road Back
• Disastrous Uncertainty
• After the Storm: Social Capital Regrouping in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina
• Government Dines on Katrina Leftovers
• Empowering Local Response in the Wake of Disaster

Events

• Rebuilding in the Wake of Crisis: Lessons from Hurricane Recovery
• Rational Homeland Security: Lowering Obstacles and Creating Economic and Socially Sensible Policies
• The Crisis of Katrina: Lessons for Preparedness and Response
• California: The Role of the State in Disaster Response
• Understanding Developing Countries: An Economic and Cultural Approach