Chika Okafor
Assistant Professor of Law | Assistant Professor of Economics (by courtesy) | Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations (by courtesy)
PhD, Economics, Harvard University, 2024
Chika Okafor is a law, economics, and inequality scholar whose research combines economic theory with empirical methods to study how legal institutions and social networks influence pressing contemporary societal problems—such as economic inequality, mass incarceration, and climate change. His work also examines social network discrimination, criminal justice policy, and public engagement on climate action.
His research has been published in the Journal of Law and Economics and the North Carolina Law Review, and his writing has appeared in outlets such as the Boston Globe and Newsweek.
Before joining Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in 2025, Okafor held academic appointments at Harvard Law School, MIT, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company and a corporate attorney at Skadden’s London office. In public service and social impact, he founded Todaydream®, led gun violence prevention efforts with Chicago Public Schools, supported national policy at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and promoted international human rights through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
He earned his JD from Yale Law School and his BA in economics with honors from Stanford University.
Current Research
Social Network Discrimination. Okafor studies labor markets in which firms hire via referrals while maintaining “colorblind” practices. Using rigorous economic modeling calibrated with nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, he demonstrates that—despite initial equality in ability, employment, wages, and network structure—minorities receive disproportionately fewer jobs through referrals and lower expected wages simply because their social group is smaller. This discriminatory outcome, termed “social network discrimination,” arises from homophily and falls outside dominant economics discrimination models. The research estimates that the lower-bound welfare gap caused by social network discrimination disadvantages Black workers. This work isolates a potential underlying mechanism for inequality and disproves the proposition that “colorblind” policies are inherently merit-promoting, thereby introducing a new rationale for race-conscious policy.
Prosecutor Politics and Incarceration. Okafor investigates how electoral incentives shape prosecutorial decision-making and contribute to historic levels of incarceration. Exploiting variation in the timing of district attorney elections during the steepest rise in U.S. incarceration (1986–2006), his research shows that being in an election year increased per capita prison admissions and months sentenced to state prisons, with admission increases equivalent to moving 0.85 standard deviations along the distribution of DA behavior within state (50th to 80th percentile). By interacting results with county characteristics, the work reveals that sentencing outcomes respond to voter preferences—including anti-Black/pro-White racial bias and preferences regarding court harshness. The findings suggest that collective approaches to transforming public opinion—beyond technocratic policy approaches—may be essential to stemming rising incarceration rates.
Selected Publications
