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Welcome! I am a postdoctoral researcher at CORE/LIDAM, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain). I completed my PhD in Economics at Monash University, Australia where I was affiliated with SoDa Labs in 2025. I was a visiting PhD student at King's College London and University of Warwick in 2024. 

I work on political economy, development economics, and economic history. My research combines natural experiments with newly digitized archival and geospatial data, original surveys, and more recently, field experiments. In my job market paper, I study whether the economic function of a middleman minority can be replaced once the group is removed, using the 1972 expulsion of Indians from Uganda. In other work, I study how economic relationships between ethnic groups shape political identity and development in Malaysia. In ongoing projects, I study how religion shapes economic outcomes and cultural norms.

I am on the 2026/27 job market.

Here is my CV.

Email:  chun.kok@uclouvain.be

Twitter: @chuncheekok

Bluesky: @chuncheekokecon.bsky.social