Christa Brunnschweiler is an Associate Professor in Economics. She holds a PhD in Economics and an MA in Political Science from the University of Zurich. 

Her research interests are in applied economics. She has mainly explored topics in economic growth and development, particularly in resource economics and conflict studies. She uses third-party data, archival information, and data from fieldwork, including RCTs, lab-in-the-field experiments, and survey experiments. Her work has been published in several journals such as Science, the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the Journal of Monetary Economics, Ecological Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, and World Development. One of her articles on the natural resource curse won the 2009 biannual Erik Kempe Awardin Environmental and Resource Economics.