Ivey welcomes 12 new faculty members to campus! To help you get to know our new colleagues, we asked each of them a list of questions about their academic – and personal – interests.
Get to know: Christian Dippel
Christian Dippel comes to Ivey as an Associate Professor, Business, Economics and Public Policy, from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, where he has taught for the past decade. His research lies at the intersection of political economy and economic history and he also has expertise in the economic development of Native American reservations in the U.S. and First Nations reserves in Canada. He’s also an avid traveller and enjoys doing sports and outdoor activities.
Q&A with Christian Dippel
What is the most important thing business executives can learn from your research/area of expertise?
My expertise spans three broad topics: one, political economy and political risk; two, sovereign debt, particularly underfunded public sector pensions; three, the economic development of indigenous communities. My research applies a political economy perspective (i.e. outcomes as determined by the political process and firms’ non-market strategies) to all of these questions.
Where did you grow up and what was it like there?
I grew up in Frankfurt, Germany. Lots of soccer, sauerkraut and beer, but a very international little town. Germany has a reputation as super-efficient and there is an element of that, but there is also a strangely masochistic streak that runs through the culture and the country’s policy-making apparatus, and German society seems prone to engaging in net-negative policy experiments.
Who have been your strongest influences in life?
On the personal side, my grandma, who used to tell me stories about her life as a young woman to teach me the fragility of liberty and the seductive powers of groupthink and authoritarianism; my father, who raised me on steady diet of stories of outstanding individuals; my mother, who taught me to work hard; and my wife, who taught me how to put it all together.
What led you to your career?
When I entered college, I was drawn to the study of politics and history, but I went for economics because it offered a more tangible skill set. Being from Frankfurt, I did a couple of investment banking internships during my undergraduate education and at some stage my natural path appeared to be a career in finance. In my last year of undergraduate, I was an exchange student at the University of Toronto, and towards the end of that, I met my now wife. Suddenly, I needed a way to stay in Ontario, and luckily, the University of Toronto accepted me into the doctoral stream of its Masters program on short notice. And just like that I found myself on the academic career path. My PhD course work specialization was in global macro (trade and finance), but once I started doing my own research, I found myself gravitating back to studying political and historical processes, now revamped in econ lingo as political economy and economic history. More recently, I have become much more interested in technology and entrepreneurship, and leveraging my domain-specific knowledge to make an impact outside of the narrow confines of academic research.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
My kids are coming to an age where they really challenge me physically: skiing, soccer, and hockey. I expect I have about five to 10 years left before doing this stuff together becomes an act of charity on their part so I try to squeeze out what I can.
What might someone be surprised to know about you?
In the last 15 months, my family and I travelled far and wide across America, taking multiple road trips across more than 20 states. I’ve always believed in federalism, but federalism took on an almost surreal quality during this time because states like Montana and California inhabited two totally separate realities. Zipping in and out of the matrix by just driving for a couple of hours was one of the most eye-opening experiences I have had.
What is the most played song on your playlist as of now?
British invasion and Drum’n’Base for road trips, German and French Hip Hop for sports. For work, anything instrumental and mellow.
What podcast do you enjoy?
We live in a heavily Russell-conjugated information landscape, so I try to allocate one-third of my media consumption on either side of the Overton window and one third inside it.
What book would you recommend to others? On the personal side? On the business side?
On a personal side, Matthew Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. In the last two decades, behavioural economics, and social and evolutionary psychology have created a detailed understanding of humans as moist robots, and hacking the moist robot has become a massive industry. On the business side, I have read Peter Thiel’s Zero to One many times, as well as Scott Adams’ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.
