Nicholas Francis Robert Crafts CBE (born 9 March 1949 in Nottingham, England) is Professor of Economic History at the University of Sussex Business School, a post held from 2019. Previously he was Professor of Economics and Economic History at the University of Warwick, a post he held from 2005. Previously he was a Professor of Economic History at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) between 1995-2005. He also teaches for the TRIUM Global Executive MBA Program, an alliance of NYU Stern, the LSE and HEC School of Management. His main fields of interest are the British economy in the last 200 years, European economic growth, historical data on the British economy, the Industrial Revolution and international income distribution, especially with reference to the Human Development Index. He has produced a substantial body of papers for academic journals, the British government and international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund.

During the 1980s Crafts argued that during the Industrial Revolution an abnormally high (compared to countries which industrialised later) proportion of the British economy came to be devoted to industry and international trade, and that the British economy always tended to grow slowly. When Britain was overtaken by Germany and the USA - both larger countries - in the late nineteenth century, this was not because of any deceleration of British performance.