Welcome!

I am a research fellow at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. I will join the IR department at the London School of Economics and Political Science from July 2012 as lecturer. Before joining Princeton, I was an assistant professor at IMT Lucca and a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Politics at New York University.

I study the formation and the consequences of preferential trade agreements, such as the European Union and NAFTA. More specifically, my research covers two broad areas. The first area is a direct outgrowth of my dissertation topic and addresses the relationship between trade policy and domestic institutions. The second area focuses on the impact of trade agreements on economic reforms in developing countries. I am currently writing a book manuscript with Johannes Urpelainen on this topic.

I am also working on several side projects involving economic crises, labor rights, energy and environmental policy, and media. Finally, Andreas Dür (University of Salzburg), Manfred Elsig (WTI Bern), Karolina Milewicz (University of Oxford), and I completed data collection on over 550 trade agreements signed from 1950 to present day. Using manual content analysis and statistical techniques to check coders’ reliability, the dataset includes measures on flexibility, coverage, commitments, trade integration, and delegation features. More information is available at http://www.nccr-trade.org/wps/wp2/21/.