I am a Professor of Politics at New York University with an affiliate appointment at NYU-Abu Dhabi, and Director of Research at the Princeton Sovereign Finance Lab.

I’m the previous editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Economics and Politics, and currently a member of the editorial team at International Organization.  I sit on the editorial boards  of American Journal of Political Science,  International Organization, and previously at Journal of Politics and International Interactions. I am a founder of the the Global Research in International Political Economy Webinar, and I run the NYU IR Workshop.  Prior to joining NYU,  I was Director of the Center for International Studies and Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California.   I’ve held grants from the National Science Foundation, and the Japan Foundation, among others. I have held visiting appointments at Princeton, UCLA and Georgetown. 

My research interests include the political economy of terrorism, bilateral trade and investment, sovereign debt, international organizations, and the anti-globalization backlash.  I am the author, together with James R. Hollyer and James R. Vreeland of Information, Democracy and Autocracy: Economic Transparency and Political (In)Stability, Cambridge University Press (2018), where we explore the causes and consequences of information flows on democratic stability and autocratic instability.

I have presented my work at conferences and workshops around the world, and offered keynote lectures at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, the Instituto Nacional de Transparencia, Acceso a la Información y Protección de Datos Personales in Mexico City, The Alexander Hamilton Center at NYU in New York, Economic Research Southern Africa in Soweto and the Political Economy of Reforms Workshop at Mannheim University. My research and commentary has been featured in The Washington Post, The Economist, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic and The Los Angeles Times, among others.

I received a PhD in Economics from Columbia University and BA in Economics from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. I live in New York City. 

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