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Chika O. Okafor: Faculty Experts

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Chika O. Okafor

Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

Assistant Professor of Law
Assistant Professor of Economics (by courtesy)
Assistant Professor of Management & Organizations (by courtesy)
Faculty Fellow at the Institute of Policy Research

About

Areas of Focus

  • Social network discrimination — why smaller groups receive fewer opportunities even under race-neutral rules
  • Voting rights and redistricting after Louisiana v. Callais
  • Prosecutorial behavior, elections, and mass incarceration
  • Equal protection and anti-discrimination law
  • Law and economics of inequality

Work/Research

Dr. Chika Okafor is an economist and legal scholar whose research shows how inequality can arise from structure alone, without anyone intending it. His theory of "social network discrimination"—first formalized in the Journal of Law and Economics—demonstrates that when opportunities travel through personal relationships, members of smaller groups receive systematically fewer of them even when every group starts out equal and decision-makers are entirely race-blind. The cause is arithmetic, not animus: group size combined with homophily, the human tendency to connect with similar others. He applies this framework to economic inequality and employment discrimination, and to equal protection doctrine after Students for Fair Admissions. He extends it to voting rights and redistricting after Louisiana v. Callais. He also studies elected prosecutors; drawing on a new dataset covering every district attorney in office during the steepest rise in U.S. incarceration, he finds that sentencing grew harsher in election years and softened as public opinion did—evidence that voter preferences, not policy choices alone, drove mass incarceration. His research has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered; he has been interviewed on NPR-affiliate WBEZ's In the Loop, Illinois Public Media's The 21st Show, and WVON "The Talk of Chicago"; and his writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, Slate, the Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, and Democracy Docket. He is the founder of Todaydream, a youth development organization connecting K–12 students in under-resourced schools with accomplished role models from backgrounds like their own.