Biographical Summary

I am an economist, whose research concerns international economic policy and institutions. My main field is international trade, with development economics and public economics as secondary fields. My current interests focus on how the policies and institutions affecting, and affected by, international trade can promote or retard the process of economic development. One of my current projects studies how authoritarian regimes use international trade policy to maintain political power and stability. A second project develops a new form of contest called a ‘parallel contest’ to study the formation of trade agreements and environmental agreements, that highlights the role of ratification uncertainty on successful implementation. My research has been published in such journals as the Journal of International Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and World Bank Economic Review. I received a BSc in Economics with International Trade and Development from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick. I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Exeter Business School. Prior to that I spent most of my career at Vanderbilt University, with briefer spells working at the Universities of Bath, Birmingham, Oxford and Warwick.

I am a member of the Global Authoritarianism Network at the University of Exeter. This is an interdisciplinary network spanning economics, geography, law, political science and other disciplines, set up to understand the various ways in which authoritarian regimes and their agents use international networks to promote and sustain their power. I am also an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Political Economy, a Research Fellow of CESifo, an External Associate of the CAGE Research Centre at Warwick, and a GEP External Research Fellow at Nottingham.