Leonard Wantchekon (born 1956) is a Beninese economist and professor of Politics and International Affairs at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and an affiliate of the Economics Department at Princeton University.
[4] Wantchekon's research interests include democratization, clientelism and redistributive politics, resource curse, the long-term social impact of historical events, and development economics.
He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the founder of the African School of Economics.
[6] In November 2018 he became the first black African[citation needed] to be pronounced Fellow of the Econometric Society.
[7] He was a historical adviser on the 2022 American historical epic film The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, which is about the Agojie, the all-female warrior unit that protected the West African kingdom of Dahomey during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.