Starting Fall 2025, I will be an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy in the Global Studies Department at Bentley University. I study private governance in the context of national security regulations, in particular business compliance with economic sanctions. For decades, the US government has enforced economic sanctions extraterritorially, often without the consent of firms. Yet in recent years, the government introduced private governance arrangements. I ask the following questions: (1) Why does the US government now rely on private governance to ensure US-tied businesses are complying with economic sanctions? (2) Is private governance over sanctions compliance efforts effective in achieving the US government’s goals? If so, how?
In my dissertation, I show that private governance emerged as a self-enforcing regulatory outcome with leniency offered to firms based on prior compliance efforts, and the new regulatory guidance promoted prudence among risky cross-border mergers and acquisitons initiated by acquirers from sanction-prone sectors. I employ a diverse range of methods, including large-N observational data analysis, corporate audit experiments, elite interviews, and formal models, across different projects that collectively address these questions.
I earned a PhD in Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was a graduate fellow at the Innovations for Peace and Development Lab and the Clements Center for National Security. I also held an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Outside my academic career, I worked at China Policy, a macro-policy consultancy based in Beijing, as the lead macroeconomic analyst. I have also had professional experiences at the European Union Delegation to China, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, and the World Resource Institute.
In my dissertation, I show that private governance emerged as a self-enforcing regulatory outcome with leniency offered to firms based on prior compliance efforts, and the new regulatory guidance promoted prudence among risky cross-border mergers and acquisitons initiated by acquirers from sanction-prone sectors. I employ a diverse range of methods, including large-N observational data analysis, corporate audit experiments, elite interviews, and formal models, across different projects that collectively address these questions.
I earned a PhD in Government at the University of Texas at Austin, where I was a graduate fellow at the Innovations for Peace and Development Lab and the Clements Center for National Security. I also held an MA in International Trade and Investment Policy from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
Outside my academic career, I worked at China Policy, a macro-policy consultancy based in Beijing, as the lead macroeconomic analyst. I have also had professional experiences at the European Union Delegation to China, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, and the World Resource Institute.