This really is the culmination of a conversation I had with a friend about IR/IPE journals focused on the East Asia-Pacific (EAP) region. At the time, the journal in question was undergoing a bit of a dry period in terms of collecting impactful references to papers published within its pages, and so the question that…
Category: Academia
A primer for identifying quality sources
As is the case with assessing news reporting and the epidemic of ‘fake news’, relying on quality academic sources matters. It can be a challenge working information on source quality and selection into a class.(1) Too often, the expectation seems to be that students will identify quality sources based on a class’s reading list, but…
Brief thoughts on reviewing
One of the more frequent and most underrated activities as an academic is reviewing materials for publication. Training for this at the PhD level is often ignored. One of the interesting aspects of receiving reviews is seeing how others approach the process. Sometimes this is interesting for good reasons (as in, ‘I should do this’)…
Financial innovation and macroprudential policies
A project with Max Bernier, a former MSc student of mine, was recently (and very speedily) accepted at Research in Economics, after spending a long time awaiting a second reviewer at another journal. We take an aggregate approach to financial innovation, in contrast with most other research (which focuses on distinct methods of innovation), and…
The OBOR Problem
Over the past few years, China’s One Belt-One Road (OBOR) investment and trade initiative has gained a lot of attention from students, particularly those visiting UCL from China. This seems to be the result of political announcements and media coverage: ‘everyone is talking about it’ is a frequent motivation. This, in itself, is not at…
Pacific International Politics Conference
The third meeting of the Pacific International Politics Conference (PIPC) was held at Hong Kong University at the beginning of this month. I received the call for papers through the International Political Economy Society (IPES) email list earlier this year, and the combination of attractive location, substantive focus, and friendly (and established) organizers convinced me…