Bio


Vasiliki Fouka is an Associate Professor of Political Science, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Her research interests lie at the intersection of political economy and political behavior. She uses historical and contemporary data to understand what shapes social identities in the short and long run and the implications of that for political and economic behavior and policy design. Major applications of her research include immigrant assimilation, the determinants of prejudice against ethnic and racial minorities, and intergroup conflict.

Her articles have been published in leading journals in political science and economics, including the American Political Science Review, the Annual Review of Political Science and the Review of Economic Studies.

Academic Appointments


Administrative Appointments


  • Faculty Affiliate, Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University (2024 - Present)
  • Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Stanford University (2024 - Present)
  • Faculty Affiliate, Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University (2023 - Present)
  • Research Network Affiliate, CESIfo (2022 - Present)
  • Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research (2021 - Present)
  • Research Affiliate, Center for Economic Policy Research (2020 - Present)
  • W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the Starr Foundation Fellow, Hoover Institution (2019 - 2020)
  • Faculty Affiliate, The Europe Center, Stanford University (2017 - Present)
  • Faculty Research Fellow, Clayman Institute, Stanford University (2017 - 2018)
  • Faculty Fellow, Institute for Research in the Social Sciences, Stanford University (2016 - 2017)

Honors & Awards


  • Gordon and Dailey Pattee Faculty Fellowship, Stanford University (2023-2024)
  • Joseph L. Bernd Best Paper Award, Journal of Politics (2022)
  • Sakurako and William Fisher Family Faculty Scholar, Stanford University (2021-2023)
  • Best Paper Award, APSA Migration and Citizenship Section (2021)
  • Austin Robinson Memorial Prize, Economic Journal (2020)
  • Hellman Faculty Scholar, Hellman Fellows Program (2017-2018)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations


  • Board Member, Society for Institutional and Organizational Economics (2024 - Present)
  • Associate Editor, Journal of Comparative Economics (2023 - Present)
  • Editorial Board Member, Political Science Research and Methods (2023 - Present)
  • Board Member, Association for Comparative Economic Studies (2022 - Present)
  • Associate Editor, Journal of the European Economic Association (2021 - Present)
  • Board Member, Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (2021 - Present)
  • Editorial Board Member, Journal of Historical Political Economy (2020 - Present)

Professional Education


  • PhD, Pompeu Fabra University, Economics (2015)

2024-25 Courses


Stanford Advisees


All Publications


  • State Policy and Immigrant Integration ANNUAL REVIEW OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Fouka, V. 2024; 27: 25-46
  • Collective Remembrance and Private Choice: German-Greek Conflict and Behavior in Times of Crisis AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Fouka, V., Voth, H. 2022
  • Hate crime towards minoritized groups increases as they increase in sized-based rank. Nature human behaviour Cikara, M., Fouka, V., Tabellini, M. 2022

    Abstract

    People are on the move in unprecedented numbers within and between countries. How does demographic change affect local intergroup dynamics? Complementing accounts that emphasize stereotypical features of groups as determinants of their treatment, we propose the group reference dependence hypothesis: violence and negative attitudes towards each minoritized group will depend on the number and size of other minoritized groups in a community. Specifically, as groups increase or decrease in rank in terms of their size (for example, to the largest minority within a community), discriminatory behaviour and attitudes towards them should change accordingly. We test this hypothesis for hate crimes in US counties between 1990 and 2010 and attitudes in the United States and United Kingdom over the past two decades. Consistent with this prediction, we find that as Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian and Arab populations increase in rank relative to one another, they become more likely to be targeted with hate crimes and more negative attitudes. The rank effect holds above and beyond group size/proportion, growth rate and many other alternative explanations. This framework makes predictions about how demographic shifts may affect coalitional structures in the coming years and helps explain previous findings in the literature. Our results also indicate that attitudes and behaviours towards social categories are not intransigent or driven only by features associated with those groups, such as stereotypes.

    View details for DOI 10.1038/s41562-022-01416-5

    View details for PubMedID 35941234

  • Racial Diversity and Racial Policy Preferences: The Great Migration and Civil Rights REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES Calderon, A., Fouka, V., Tabellini, M. 2022
  • Changing In-Group Boundaries: The Effect of Immigration on Race Relations in the United States AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Fouka, V., Tabellini, M. 2021
  • From Immigrants to Americans: Race and Assimilation during the Great Migration REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES Fouka, V., Mazumder, S., Tabellini, M. 2021
  • RECOGNITION OF COLLECTIVE VICTIMHOOD AND OUTGROUP PREJUDICE PUBLIC OPINION QUARTERLY Dinas, E., Fouka, V., Schlapfer, A. 2021; 85 (2): 517-538
  • Family History and Attitudes toward Out-Groups: Evidence from the European Refugee Crisis JOURNAL OF POLITICS Dinas, E., Fouka, V., Schlapfer, A. 2021

    View details for DOI 10.1086/710016

    View details for Web of Science ID 000637898100002

  • Political Secularism and Muslim Integration in the West: Assessing the Effects of the French Headscarf Ban AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Abdelgadir, A., Fouka, V. 2020; 114 (3): 707–23
  • AGRICULTURAL RETURNS TO LABOUR AND THE ORIGINS OF WORK ETHICS ECONOMIC JOURNAL Fouka, V., Schlapfer, A. 2020; 130 (628): 1081–1113

    View details for DOI 10.1093/ej/ueaa029

    View details for Web of Science ID 000546136700010

  • Backlash: The Unintended Effects of Language Prohibition in US Schools after World War I REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES Fouka, V. 2020; 87 (1): 204–39
  • How Do Immigrants Respond to Discrimination? The Case of Germans in the US During World War I AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW Fouka, V. 2019; 113 (2): 405–22