Spotlight - Edmund Malesky
(2009) Q&A with Edmund Malesky, Assistant Professor of Political Science
 Professor Edmund Malesky |
Tell us about your educational background before coming to San Diego. I went to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service for my undergraduate education and received a degree in developmental economics. My first job was a research assistant position at the Department of Justice – Antitrust Division where I did econometric research to see if mergers would have an impact on price increases. In 1997 I won the Luce Scholarship and went to Asia to work, and received language training at the Foreign Service Institute in Virginia. In Vietnam, I worked at the National Economics University and taught statistics. It was this experience that helped fuel my interest in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. After Vietnam, I attended Duke, where I earned my Ph.D. in political science and also took advantage of a certification program in political economy. |
What are some of your research interests, and what are you currently working on?
Right now I have 3 research agendas:
1. Continuation of work that I began on my dissertation: the political influence of multinational corporations and how they change the business environment, how they lobby for political reforms they need to run their operations, and I ultimately look at whether this is good or bad for developing countries. Currently, I have an extensive research agenda with Nate Jensen of Washington University on the political motivations to push forward tax incentives for multinational corporations
2. Political institutions in authoritarian systems. Most current political scientists compare democratic and authoritarian governments or pay really close attention to the institutions within the subset of democratic countries. For instance, scholars have devoted a great deal of energy to studying electoral institutions, executive-legislative relations, and judicial institutions in democratic states. One of the most famous exemplars of this research is IR/PS’ very professor Matthew Shugart. I am doing something very similar to Dr. Shugart except that I am interested in institutions in authoritarian countries. There is huge variation on how these countries perform economically, both in terms of growth and equality. Right now, we do not have a way of explaining this variation. My first paper with two other colleagues is about why both Vietnam and China have grown extremely fast economically, but inequality is growing in China while it has not changed that much in Vietnam. I am also working with an IR/PS alumnus, Paul Schuler, to look more closely at the role of parliaments in authoritarian countries and whether or not they provide an extra node of accountability.
3. Formalization in developing countries. The main question is, when do small gray or black market entrepreneurs decide to formally declare their businesses under law and when do they subject themselves to state regulation? This is mostly an economic governance issue and I have been taking advantage of data that I developed in Vietnam and Cambodia. This is a very important issue since 35% of developing countries’ gross domestic product goes unreported, signifying a huge loss in potential resources for infrastructure or other social services.
What are you looking forward to the most in your recent appointment as a term member for the Council on Foreign Relations?
I am looking forward to meeting interesting people, talking about American foreign policy with elite policy makers and public intellectuals, and working on some of the study groups with these people in order to help address some of the key issues in U.S. foreign policy today. Mostly, I am hoping to be a sponge, soaking up as much insight and experience as possible from people who have had incredible careers in diplomacy and policy circles.
What classes are you teaching at IR/PS?
I teach QM 2, which is the second course in the IR/PS econometrics sequence. I also teach Political Economy of Southeast Asia, and this year I am transforming my former class, Field Research Methods, into Program Design and Evaluation. The idea for this class is to find out whether policy interventions are successful and how we can use tools from field research, such as surveys and randomized experiments, to determine the success of our choices and interventions affecting economic development.
What do you like about teaching?
I have taught at other places like Duke and Harvard, and what I like about teaching at IR/PS is that students have such diverse experience, they have worked in so many different careers and they are from all over the world. It’s fascinating because the students have thought deeply about the issues we discuss in class beforehand, and they have their own well-informed ideas about them before they ever sit down in the first lecture. The classroom experience is really enjoyable, and, as I see it, my job is to provide students with the knowledge that they can directly apply in their careers or jobs. I really hope that I provide students with the toolkits they need to better follow their passions.
Why did you decide to become a professor?
There are not many jobs where you can wake up one morning with burning question about some issue and then devote the rest of your day or week to answering it. There’s an issue that you feel you must resolve and then you go about taking it apart incrementally like a detective. The questions, the answers, and ultimately the policy solutions are yours, and I love that aspect of research. I can’t imagine another place where you can do this—working on one issue one day, a different issue the next, and then you can always do something totally esoteric, such as a current project I have on the long-term implications of dual-executives in power-sharing arrangements. I also really value the types of conversations you get to have with other people about your work or their work at conferences, in the IR/PS hallways, etc. As a student I really liked trading ideas back forth with friends after class and that’s my entire life now. I get to trade ideas and big research questions with super-smart people. In addition, when you have interesting ideas that you want to impart, you can further sharpen those ideas by sharing them with students and hearing their feedback.
Is there life outside of IR/PS?
Yes! I have a small consulting business with the World Bank and the Asia Foundation which seeps into my research and teaching a lot. I love sports and play soccer and tennis as much as I can. I also have a wonderful wife and daughter, who are very supportive of my career. Plus, we live in one of the coolest places in the world and we spend as much free time as we can enjoying it. We often go to the beach and hike in Torrey Pines. I am spending a lot of time with my two-year old daughter these days. It has been amazing to watch her develop. We can actually have fun little conversations about the places we visit.
Do you have any advice for IR/PS students?
Current students need to know that professors really value IR/PS students for their intellectual curiosity and we recognize that the curriculum can appear to be confining. I don’t think any professor here, however, wants a student to make a tradeoff between the skills they learn at IR/PS and the curiosity that drove them back to school. We see our roles as helping them channel that intellectual curiosity into their careers and professional agendas. Students should never lose sight of why they came to grad school; even when they’re on their 40th hour of their QM assignment! These exercises are only meant to help students pursue their passions more forcefully.
In addition, IR/PS is only now achieving the same name value as competitors, and sometimes students feel at a comparative disadvantage when they look and apply for jobs. What I’ve seen in my 4 years at IR/PS is that when students get a job in any organization, their trajectory through that organization is blisteringly fast because of the skills they achieved at IR/PS. The added value IR/PS gives them is so much greater than what they would get at other schools. For example, one of our recent alumni has been out for a couple of years, and she is already the deputy economist at The Asia Foundation. Students, keep in mind that once you get out in the work force, the added value of IR/PS really shines through and has payoffs for students down the road as well. IR/PS alumni are doing amazing things and the network available to students will grow each and every year.
For more information about Professor Malesky's work and areas of expertise, please visit his faculty page.
