Kara Dimitruk

Kara Dimitruk earned her Ph.D. in economics from University of California, Irvine, in 2018. She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Stellenbosch University in South Africa (2018-2021) and a visiting assistant professor at Swarthmore College (2021-2023). She researches issues in economic history, political economy, and law and economics. Dimitruk is broadly interested in how political and legal institutions affect the functioning of land and labor markets and how this helps us understand long-run economic development. She studies these issues in two historical settings, pre-industrial Britain and colonial South Africa.

Select Publications

• "The Glorious Revolution and Access to Parliament" (2023) The Journal of Economic History 83(3): 676-708.
• “De jure property rights and state capacity: evidence from land specification in the Boer Republics.” (2021). Journal of Institutional Economics 17(5): 764-780. (with Sophia Du Plessis and Stan Du Plessis)

Appointed to the Faculty

Educational Background

Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
M.A., University of California, Irvine
B.A., Fordham University