Mark Koyama is an Associate Professor in Economics at George Mason University, a Research Fellow at CEPR, and a Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center. He obtained his DPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. His main area of research is economic history. In particular, he is interested in the role played by institutions in explaining the onset of modern economic growth and the role of culture and religion in economic development. He is the coauthor of Persecution and Toleration (CUP, 2019), with Noel Johnson, and How the World Became Rich (Polity, 2022), with Jared Rubin.