Biographical Summary

I am an economist whose research focuses on the political economy of international economic policy and institutions. My main fields are Institutions, International Trade, and Economic Development. My current interests centre 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 main projects studies how authoritarian regimes use international trade policy to maintain political power and stability. My second main current project develops a new form of contest called a ‘parallel contest’ to study the formation of trade agreements and environmental agreements, highlighting the role of ratification uncertainty in the successful implementation of such agreements.

My research has been published in such journals as the Journal of International Economics, Journal of Public Economics, and World Bank Economic Review, and I have published an edited volume titled The WTO and Economic Development, with MIT Press.

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 the Founding Director of the InsTED Network. This is a global research network centred on research in economics and related disciplines at the intersection, or union, of Institutions, Trade, and Economic Development. Our activities centre around the website, insted.net, and an annual workshop held at a different location each year.

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.