Nic Johnson

Teaching Fellow in the Social Sciences, Law, Letters, and Society, University of Chicago (department page)

Education:

• J.D. Candidate, University of Chicago
• Ph.D. in History, University of Chicago
• M.A. in Economics, Johns Hopkins University
• B.A. in Math, University of Minnesota

Research:

• “Expecting Robert Lucas,” Modern Intellectual History (2024)
• “Times of Interest,” NLR 143, Sept-Oct 2023
• “Imperial Fed,” Phenomenal World, Jain Family Institute (2023)
  • working paper version, Duke Center for History of Political Economy (2024)
• “Reconstructing Finance,” Phenomenal World, Jain Family Institute (2021)

Teaching Experience:

• Courses Taught
  • History of central banking
  • Twentieth Century Theories of Capitalism
  • BA Senior Thesis Seminar in Law, Letters Society
  • Power, Identity, Resistance
  • History of Economics
  • The Marginal Revolution
• Teaching Assistant
  • Early Modern World Economic History
  • Elements of Microeconomics
  • Economics of Discrimination
  • Macroeconomic Theory I (graduate)

Awards and Scholarships:

• Visiting Scholar, Center for the History of Political Economy, Duke University, 2022-3
• Shapiro Fellowship at the University of Chicago
• T. Rowe Price Fellowship at Johns Hopkins

Book Reviews:

• Book Review (forthcoming), H-Diplo, of Aditi Sahasrabuddhe, Bankers’ Trust
• “What the Thunder Said,” NLR, of Melinda Cooper, Counterrevolution
• Book Review, Business History Review, of Thomas Moser and Marcel Savioz (eds.), Karl Brunner and Monetarism
• “Embarrassment of Riches“, NLR, of Guido Alfani, As Gods Among Men
• “After Free Trade,” Boston Review, of Eric Helleiner, The Neomercantilists
• “In the Common Interest,” Boston Review, of Ariel Ron, Grassroots Leviathan
• Roundtable on Destin Jenkins’ Bonds of Inequality, Jain Family Institute

Popular:

• “Planet UFC,” New York Review of Books, June 2026
• “Runaway Short-Termism,” New York Review of Books, November 2025
• “Breaking the Conveyor Belt,” New York Review of Books, April 2025
• “Morally Bankrupt,” New Labor Forum, Vol 35, Issue 1.
• “The Biden infrastructure bills and America’s traditional approach to economic growth,” Washington Post
• “The American Anti-Austerity Tradition,” Washington Center for Equitable Growth
• RGK, An occasional Public History Podcast on Political Economy
• Interview with Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy

About Me

I’m a first-year law student at the University of Chicago Law School. I’m interested in banking and financial regulation, securities, and tax, and in how law shapes the work of central banks, capital markets, and sovereign borrowers.

I come to law after years of studying those institutions as a historian and economist. My Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Chicago traced how American macroeconomic policy changed over the postwar period.

My training is quantitative as well as historical. I have a B.A. in mathematics and an M.A. in economics, and I have worked with archival records and financial data throughout my research. I also write for general audiences, in the New York Review of Books, the Washington Post, Boston Review, and American Affairs.