About Us

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Raymond Robertson

Co-Director and Globalization Team Co-Leader, LEDR
Director, Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy
Helen and Roy Ryu Professor of Economics and Government
Bush School of Government and Public Service

Biography | robertson@tamu.edu

Raymond Robertson is a professor and holder of the Helen and Roy Ryu Chair in Economics and Government in the Departments of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service and the director of the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy. Robertson’s research focuses on labor market integration, global value chains, and international economics. Robertson is a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, and a senior research fellow at the Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center. He previously chaired the US Department of Labor’s National Advisory Committee for Labor Provisions of the US Free Trade Agreements and served on both the State Department’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the Center for Global Development’s advisory board. Robertson earned a PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin.

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Kaleb Girma Abreha

Globalization Co-leader, LEDR
Assistant Research Scientist, Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics & Public Policy
Bush School of Government and Public Service

Biography | kaleb.abreha@tamu.edu

Kaleb Abreha is an applied economist with a research focus on international trade and investment, firm and industry dynamics, trade and industrial policy, industrialization, and economic growth. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics and Business Economics from Aarhus University, a Master’s in Agricultural Economics from the University of Copenhagen, and a bachelor’s in economics from Addis Ababa University. He is also a former World Bank Africa Fellow.

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David H. Bearce

Globalization Co-leader, LEDR
Professor and Head of International Affairs Department
Bush School of Government & Public Service

Biography | dhbearce@tamu.edu

David H. Bearce joined Texas A&M as the Head of the International Affairs Department in the Bush School of Government and Public Service. After working for several years in Washington, DC, he earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the Ohio State University in 2001 and was a faculty member at the University of Pittsburgh (2001-2010) and the University of Colorado Boulder (2010-2022) before joining Texas A&M. His teaching focuses on international political economy, international institutions, and foreign policy, and he has won awards for his teaching in a large classroom setting and for his graduate student mentoring outside of the classroom. Over the past 20 years, he has published 35 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals, most of which were co-authored with his graduate students, and a research monograph titled Monetary Divergence: Domestic Policy Autonomy in the Post-Bretton Woods Era.

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Luis Espinoza

Globalization Co-leader, LEDR
Assistant Professor
The Bush School of Government & Public Service

lespinoza@tamu.edu

Luis Espinoza Bardales is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Affairs. His research interests lie at the intersection of trade and development. His research focuses on economic development from a sectorial/macro perspective, with an eye on potential lessons for policy. In particular, he is interested in understanding the main mechanisms behind sustained catch-up growth, structural transformation, and other markers of economic development, both from a historical and a contemporary perspective, and whether they can be fostered by active policy. In addition, Luis is interested in the role that differences in the strength of contract enforcement institutions across countries play in international trade patterns and firms’ global sourcing decisions, as well as how this role may be different for foreign multinational companies.

Luis earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan in 2024. Before pursuing his doctorate, Luis worked at the Center for International Development at Harvard University. Luis also holds a MPAID degree from Harvard University and a B.A. in Economics and a diploma in Applied Mathematics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

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Thomas Michael Flaherty, Jr.

Globalization Co-leader, LEDR
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
The Bush School of Government & Public Service

thomasflaherty@tamu.edu

Thomas Flaherty is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UC San Diego. His research uses a variety of empirical methods to explore the political and economic effects of international trade from a local labor market perspective. His work has been published in International Organization, Economics & Politics, and the Review of International Organizations and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Yankelovich Center, and the San Diego Fellowship. 

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Benjamin Helms

Assistant Professor
The Bush School of Government & Public Service

Biography | benhelms@tamu.edu

Benjamin Helms joined the Department of International Affairs as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2023. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his PhD in Politics from the University of Virginia in 2022.

Helms’ research interests are in international political economy, with a particular focus on the political economy of globalization in emerging economies and the politics of international migration. He is particularly interested in how global economic integration reshapes domestic politics in developing countries, as well as the political causes and consequences of immigration. Helms’ book, The Ties that Bind: Immigration and the Global Political Economy (co-authored with David Leblang), was published with Cambridge University Press in 2023. His ongoing projects focus on globalization and governance outcomes in emerging economies, the relationship between internal migration and political change in developing countries, and the linkages between international migration and foreign investment.

Helms’ research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, International Studies Quarterly, Studies in Comparative International Development, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. His research has been supported by the Bankard Fund for Political Economy.

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Reyko Huang

Peace & Conflict Co-leader, LEDR
Associate Professor
Bush School of Government & Public Service

Biography | rhuang@tamu.edu

Dr. Reyko Huang is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service and a 2022-25 Arts and Humanities Fellow at Texas A&M University. She specializes in the study of armed conflict and international politics, with a focus on international diplomacy and governance by rebel organizations. She is the author of The Wartime Origins of Democratization: Civil War, Rebel Governance, and Political Regimes (Cambridge University Press). Her current research examines transnational social networks among revolutionary organizations, as well as sovereignty in contested states. Professor Huang’s work has appeared in International Security, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, Ethnopolitics, Perspectives on Politics, and Journal of Peace Research, among others. Her research has been supported by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University, where she was a Zukerman Fellow, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the Minerva Research Initiative, and the Institute for Humane Studies. From 2020-2023 she served as an Associate Editor for International Studies Quarterly..

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Justin Kappiaruparampil

Peace & Conflict Co-leader, LEDR
Assistant Professor, Department of International Affairs
Bush School of Government & Public Service

kappiar@tamu.edu

Justin George Kappiaruparampil is an assistant professor in the Department of International Affairs at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. He was previously an assistant professor in the Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. Dr. Kappiaruparampil earned an M.S. and PhD in Economics from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Dr. Kappiaruparampil’s research focuses on the topic of armed conflicts and their interrelationships with economic growth and development outcomes in low-income countries. Specifically, his research focuses on political unrest in sub-Saharan Africa and its impacts on agriculture, land use, food security, and other related outcomes. He also works in the area of developmental resilience, which focuses on how individuals, households, and communities can effectively respond to various shocks and stressors, natural or man-made. On these topics, he has published peer-reviewed articles in World Development, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Land Use Policy, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, European Journal of Political Economy, and Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy.

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Matt Malis

Diplomacy & Foreign Aid Team Co-leader, LEDR
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Bush School of Government and Public Service

Biography | malis@tamu.edu

Matt Malis is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. His research focuses on questions of delegation and accountability in foreign policy. Malis received his PhD in Politics from New York University in 2022 and previously held a position as a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Niehaus Center at Princeton University.

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Ren Mu

Globalization Team Co-Leader, LEDR
Robert H. and Judy L. Allen Professor, Department of International Affairs
Bush School of Government and Public Service

Biography | rmu@tamu.edu

Ren Mu is a professor and holder of the Robert H. and Judy L. Allen Professorship at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. Her research is in the empirical microeconomics area of development economics. She primarily focuses on decision making of households and individuals in the developing world. Through evidence-based analysis, her research goal is to enhance the understanding of micro-foundations for designing and implementing sound development strategies and public policies. Mu is also a research fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. She received her PhD in economics from Michigan State University.

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William Norris

Diplomacy & Foreign Aid Team Co-leader, LEDR
Associate Professor, Department of International Affairs
Bush School of Government & Public Service

Biography | wjnorris@tamu.edu

William Norris is an associate professor of Chinese foreign and security policy at the Bush School of Government and Public Service and program director of the Economic Statecraft Program. Norris has been an associate with the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C., a postdoctoral research associate at the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs, and a fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, a joint program created by the two universities to foster the study of China’s foreign relations. He completed his doctoral work in the Security Studies Program in the Department of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His broad research interests include East Asian security, business-government relations, Chinese foreign and security policy, and international relations theory—particularly the strategic relationship between economics and national security. 

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Tatiana Zarate-Barrera

Environment & Natural Resources Team Co-leader, LEDR
Assistant Professor, Department of International Affairs
Bush School of Government & Public Service

Biography | tatianazarate@tamu.edu

Tatiana Zarate-Barrera is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Dr. Zarate-Barrera’s research combines economics and computational methods with large-scale data to study environmental issues in low to middle-income countries. She investigates how pollution affects various aspects of human well-being and evaluates the economic benefits of conserving and restoring natural ecosystems. Before joining academia, Zarate-Barrera worked for several years as a consultant for international organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Zarate-Barrera earned her PhD from the University of British Columbia, with a disciplinary focus on environmental economics.