I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Wilf Family Department of Politics at New York University (NYU). I study the political economy of sovereign finance, with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa. My research focuses on the strategic trade-offs across sovereign finance instruments such as bonds and foreign aid, the drivers behind sovereign financing decisions, and the downstream consequences of diverse access to creditors. My dissertation offers new explanations for recent rises in sovereign debt burden in sub-Saharan Africa and explores the domestic and international political drivers behind the shift from traditional instruments to market instruments.

I hold a B.A. from Zhejiang University and a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University.

Prior to the Ph.D. program at NYU, I worked as a program manager at AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary, where I managed the Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset and oversaw large-scale elite surveys in 141 low- and middle-income countries.

The latest version of my CV can be found here.

My Google Scholar profile is here.

I can be reached at m.cheng@nyu.edu.