Visitors

2023-2024

Carlos Felipe Balcázar, Ph.D., New York University, is a postdoctoral associate at the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. His research studies i) The impact of globalization on domestic political conflict, and how this shapes in turn domestic political support for international integration, ii) The effect of international trade on conflict and secession, iii) Climate change as a global source of political mobilization and political instability. His work has been published at Journal of Development Economics. His pre-PhD work has been published at Economics Letters, Review of Income and Wealth, Journal of Economic Inequality and Higher Education. He has also published book chapters in edited volumes.

Michael-David Mangini, Ph.D., Harvard University (2022), is a postdoctoral associate at the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. His research primarily studies the international political economy of trade, state formation, and the politics of structural transformation. His work has appeared in the Journal of Conflict Resolution and Economics & Politics.

 

2021-2023

Alice Xu, Ph.D., Harvard University, wass a postdoctoral associate at the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. She studies the comparative political economy of development with a focus on urban and distributive politics, inequality and social policy, and environmental politics in the Global South. Her book project explores the political consequences of class- and race-based segregation across cities in Brazil and Mexico. She also has ongoing research projects on the political economy of deforestation in the Amazon, the political causes of urban slum growth, the politics of gentrification, and informal labor in developing cities. Her research is forthcoming in the American Political Science Review

Zeren Li, PhD Duke University (2021), was a postdoctoral associate at the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. His research focuses on business-government relations, bureaucracy, good governance, and authoritarian politics, with a particular interest in China. His research has been published and is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, The China Quarterly, and other journals. His work has been featured by the Financial Times, CNBC, The Wire China, and The Guardian. His research has received funding from various institutions, including the National Science Foundation, Google Cloud Platform, the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, and others. 


2019-2021

Anton Sobolev, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2019, is a postdoctoral associate in the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. His research studies questions of comparative politics using text analysis, machine learning, and causal inference. His recent projects focus on mass protest and political control in autocracies. More broadly, he studies causes and effects of contentious political behavior.


2018-2020

Allison Hartnett, Ph.D., University of Oxford, 2019, was a postdoctoral associate in the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy at Yale University. Her research interests include comparative political economy, with a focus on inequality and redistribution, colonial legacies, rural politics, and state formation in the Middle East and North Africa. Her work has appeared in Nature: Human Behaviour and the Review of Middle East Studies.


2018-2019

Christopher Li, Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2016, is a Post-doctoral Associate and lecturer in the Department of Political Science.  His research interests are formal theory and political economy. He has published in journals such as American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. Li went onto Florida State University as an Assistant Professor of Political Science for two years before his current position as an Assistant Professor of economics and Political Science at Vanderbilt University.

 
Giovanni Andreottola, Ph.D., European University Institute, 2017.  After his time at Yale, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Federico II University of Naples from 2019 to 2022. Since 2022 he has been an assistant professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. As of October 2023 he is as an assistant professor at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria.

His research has so far been published on journals such as Games and Economic Behavior, The Journal of Politics and Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics.


2017-2019

Christian Salas, Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2017, was a Post-doctoral Associate and Lecturer in the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy. His research focuses on strategic communication in politics and the strategic foundations of market competition. He teaches game theory.

 

2017-2018

Ryan Powers

Ryan Powers is Assistant Professor of International Affairs at University of Georgia. His research interests include public opinion on global economic engagement, domestic politics of international relations, and international organizations. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Stanton Foundation and is published in American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, World Politics, and other leading journals. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2017. Website: https://ryanpowers.net.


2014-2015

Milan W. Svolik

Milan W. Svolik is a Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research and teaching focuses on comparative politics, political economy, and formal political theory. Svolik has authored and co-authored articles on the politics of authoritarian regimes and democratization in leading political science journals, including the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics. He is the author of The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge University Press, 2012), which received the best book award from the Comparative Democratization Section of the American Political Science Association.


Bonnie A. Weir

Bonnie A. Weir is  a senior lecturer in political science, research associate of the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, and founding co-Director of the Program on Peace and Development at Yale University. She also currently serves as Director of Undergraduate Studies for the program on Ethics, Politics, and EconomicsHer research and teaching focus on political violence and post-conflict politics with an empirical concentration on Northern Ireland.


2013-2014

Eric Bond

Eric Bond is the Joe Roby Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University and Leitner Visiting Professor for the 2013-14 academic year. His recent research has focused on the role of tariff overhang and escape clauses as flexibility mechanisms in the WTO agreement, and on the impact of compulsory licensing on entry decisions of multinational firms. He has written on a variety of topics in international trade theory, as well as on the role of private information in insurance markets and markets for durable goods. HIs work has appeared in a number of economics journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, and Journal of International Economics. Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ericwbond


Ruben Durante

Ruben Durante is Assistant Professor in the department of Economics at Sciences Po (Paris, France) and Leitner Research Fellow for the 2013-14 academic year. He holds an M.A. in Political Economy from Sorbonne, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University. His main field of research is political economy with particular interest in the relationship between mass media (both traditional and new) and politics; however, he has also worked on a range of other topics including the historical origins of social trust, the determinants of preferences for redistribution, the emergence of the Sicilian mafia, and anti-crime policy in Mexico. His recent publications include: “Partisan Control, Media Bias and Viewer Responses: Evidence from Berlusconi’s Italy” (with B. Knight) Journal of the European Economic Association, 2012; “Preferences for Redistribution and Perception of Fairness: an Experimental Study” (with L. Putterman and J. van der Weele) Journal of the European Economic Association, forthcoming. Website: www.rubendurante.net


Bonnie Palifka

Bonnie Palifka, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, 2003, is an international anti-corruption scholar, Associate Research Professor in the Department of Economics at the Tecnologico de Monterrey (Mexico), and Lecturer for Yale University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Latin American studies from the University of Vermont, and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Palifka is the founder and organizer of the Academia against Corruption in the Americas conference; she has consulted for Transparency International and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). She received the Rómulo Garza award for the second edition of Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform (with Susan Rose-Ackerman). Her most recent work is a co-authored book chapter, “Public Procurement and Corruption in Mexico” (forthcoming). 


Mircea Popa PhD, Harvard University, 2013, is a Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Political Research at the University of Bristol. He works on political economy, with a special focus on economic policy in the Western world. His recent work has looked at public contracting in the EU, the evolution of British economic policy over the long run, and the economics of populism. He is especially interested in the application of statistical learning methods, including text-as-data methods, to understanding economic policy.
 

2012-2013

Edwin Camp

Edwin Camp, PhD, Yale University, 2012, was a Postdoctoral Associate for the George Walter Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy. His research interests include democratic development, political competition, Latin American politics, and clientelism. His current research focuses on how political machines and clientelism allow politicians to win elections and dominate electorates. His research also focuses on the vulnerabilities of political machines and their decline. His research utilizes multiple methods, including formal theory, survey experiments and in-depth field studies. 


Juan Rebolledo, PhD Yale University 2012, was the Leitner Program’s Post-Doctoral fellow in International and Comparative Political Economy. His research interest focus on the intersection of economic and political development. He worked on a book manuscript on the persistence of subnational authoritarian enclaves in developing democracies. He also had working papers currently under review on democratization, economic inequality and the rule of law.

 

2011-2012

Marco Battaglini is the Edward H. Meyer Professor of Economics at Cornell University. His research focuses on microeconomic theory with particular emphasis on topics at the intersection between economics and politics. He is an elected fellow of the Econometric society and of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, and a non-resident fellow at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance. In 2009, he received the Carlo Alberto Medal awarded to an Italian economist under 40 for outstanding research contributions in the field of economics. Website: http://www.mbattaglini.com/
 


Quintin Beazer, PhD, The Ohio State University, 2011, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Florida State University. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Yale’s Leitner Program for International and Comparative Political Economy in 2011-2012. Prof. Beazer studies comparative and international political economy and authoritarian politics, with specialization in the politics of Russia and the post-communist countries. His current research interests include public opinion towards foreign investment, perceptions about electoral integrity, assignment of blame and responsibility in autocratic settings, and agenda-setting in state-controlled media. His work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and International Studies Quarterly.

Personal website: www.quintinbeazer.com


Avinash Dixit

Avinash Dixit is Leitner Program’s 2011 Visiting Professor Emeritus and the John J. F. Sherrerd ’52 University Professor of Economics Emeritus at Princeton University. He has since held visiting appointments at Lingnan University (Hong Kong), Oxford University, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. His research interests have included microeconomic theory, game theory, international trade, industrial organization, growth and development theories, public economics, political economy, the new institutional economics, and most recently, the dynamics of Covid transmission, and optimal transition to green energy sources. His book publications include Theory of International Trade (with Victor Norman), The Art of Strategy (with Barry Nalebuff), Investment Under Uncertainty (with Robert Pindyck), Games of Strategy (with Susan Skeath), Lawlessness and Economics: Alternative Modes of Governance, The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction Cost Politics Perspective, and Microeconomics: A Very Short Introduction. He has also published numerous articles in professional journals and collective volumes. He was President of the Econometric Society in 2001, and of the American Economic Association in 2008. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1992, the National Academy of Sciences in 2005, and the American Philosophical Society in 2010, and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 2006. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan (India’s second highest civilian honor) in 2016. 


 irwin Douglas IrwinDouglas Irwin is the John French Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. He is author of “Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy,” (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which Foreign Affairs and the Economist selected as one of their books of the year. He is also author of “Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s,” (MIT Press, 2012); “Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression,” (Princeton University Press, 2011); “Free Trade Under Fire,” (Princeton University Press, fifth edition 2020); “The Genesis of the GATT,” (Cambridge University Press, 2008, co-authored with Petros Mavroidis and Alan Sykes); “Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade,” (Princeton University Press, 1996); and many articles on trade policy in books and professional journals. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-resident senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and has also served on the staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

 
James Hollyer

James HollyerJames Hollyer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, and is on the editorial board of Comparative Political Studies.  During the 2011-2012 academic year, he was the Coca-Cola World Fund Post-Doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Leitner Program.  He was also a visiting research fellow at the Niehaus Center on Globalization and Development at Princeton University during the 2015-2016 academic year.  Professor Hollyer obtained his PhD in political science from New York University in 2012, his MA in international relations from the University of Chicago in 2006, and his BA in political economy from Williams College in 2003.  His research focuses on comparative and international political economy, particularly on transparency, corruption, political accountability, and the effects of international policy on domestic politics.  His work has appeared in the American Political Science politics.  His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Organization, and Political Analysis, among others.

Personal website: http://www.jameshollyer.com/

 

2010-2011

Andrew Eggers

Andrew Eggers, PhD Harvard University 2010, is a political scientist whose research focuses on electoral systems, strategic voting, and research methodology. In 2020 he joined the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science. Previously, he was based at Nuffield CollegeOxford (where he remains a Senior Research Fellow), and before that the London School of Economics.

 

Massimiliano Onorato

Massimiliano Onorato has a Ph.D. in Economics from Bocconi University, Milan, and is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in Yale’s Leitner Program. He was a visiting student to the Department of Economics at Yale University in 2006-07, and of M.I.T. in 2007-08. In the summer 2007 he worked at the Research Department of the I.M.F. In 2011 he will join the IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. His research interests are: institutional change and persistence, economics of organized crime, democratic transition and consolidation, and economic growth.


Moses Shayo

Moses Shayo, Ph.D., Princeton University, 2005, is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His primary research interests are in political economy and behavioral economics. His work integrates economic theory and econometric analysis with insights from social psychology and political science. His main research has centered on social identity. At the micro level, he studied the effects and determinants of social identification in voting and judicial decisions. At the aggregate level he studied the interaction between redistributive policies and patterns of national and class identification. Other lines of research include non-consequentialist motives in voting behavior and non-budget-constraint effects of prices on consumer behavior.

 

2009-2010

 
Kyle Bagwell

Kyle Bagwell, Ph.D., Stanford University, 1986, is the Donald L. Lucas Endowed Professor in Economics at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Stanford Center for International Development, a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Reporter for the American Law Institute in its study of Principles of Trade Law: The World Trade Organization, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. His research interests include the law and economics of GATT/WTO, the theory of industrial organization, and game theory. His research has been published in numerous professional journals, including The American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, and The Review of Economic Studies. He is the author, with Robert W. Staiger, of a book entitled The Economics of the World Trading System (The MIT Press, 2002).


 
Mostafa Beshkar

Mostafa Beshkar, PhD, Vanderbilt University, 2008, is an Associate Professor of Economics at Indiana University-Bloomington. He received his B.S. from Amir Kabir University and his MS from Sharif University in Tehran. His primary research interests are International Trade, Trade and Investment Policy, and Institutions of International Trade. His publications include papers on the WTO dispute settlement process, optimal design of trade agreements, and evaluation of trade negotiations. He is also an affiliate of the Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University.

 
 

 
Nuno Limão

Nuno Limão is the Wallenberg Chair Professor of International Business and Finance at Georgetown University, which he joined in 2023. His primary research and teaching interests are in international trade, trade policy, and political economy. His work integrates theoretical and empirical work to examine a variety of issues, such as how governments choose among redistribution policies, the determinants of trade policy and trade agreements, the interaction between preferential and multilateral trade liberalization, and the effects of trade costs and geographic location. His current research examines how policy uncertainty affects firms and consumers, and how international institutions can manage it. Professor Limão is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and an Associate Editor of the Journal of International Economics.