I successfully defended my doctoral dissertation—Dollar’s Preeminence: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy in the Twenty-First Century—in May 2024 and earned a PhD in political economy from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. My dissertation examined the twenty-first century's political economy of exchange rate policies by incorporating the dollar’s status as the preeminent international currency. I explored the multi-faceted nature of exchange rate policies as well as five of the six roles of the preeminent global currency in the public and private sectors, namely: an intervention currency, a currency in foreign exchange reserves, an exchange rate peg, a vehicle currency, and an invoicing currency. Having incorporated these roles of the dollar into the analysis, my dissertation introduced new theoretical and empirical approaches essential for examining the political economy of exchange rate policy in the developing world. The first two parts of the dissertation examined political determinants of two facets of exchange rate policies that have been understudied in the extant political economy literature, i.e., the choice of anchor and reference currencies as well as the foreign exchange interventions of monetary authorities. In addition, the third part of the dissertation analyzed the two essential roles of the dollar’s preeminence in the private sector in order to understand how recent developments in the foreign exchange and derivatives markets alter firms’ risk-mitigating strategies and their lobbying activities related to exchange rate policies. In addition to the dissertation, my research agenda focuses on international financial and monetary relations, the political economy of central banking, the political economy effects of globalization, and the origins and trajectories of monetary and currency policies in developing countries. Methodologically, I am interested in quantitative methods, time series with mixed frequency data, formal models, and quantitative measurements in activities related to international financial markets. Prior to my doctoral studies, I earned a Master of Arts in Economics from Duke University and a Bachelor of Economics from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.
Educational Background
- Doctor of Philosophy: Political Economy, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 2024
- Master of Arts: Political Science, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, 2018
- Master of Arts: Economics, Duke University, 2014
- Bachelor of Economics: Monetary Economics, Chulalongkorn University, 2012
Specialties
- Exchange Rate and Monetary Policies
- International Financial and Monetary Systems
- Advanced Quantitative Methods
- Programming: MATLAB, Stata, R, Python, SQL