Dr Tasha Fairfield is a comparative political scientist with expertise on political economy in Latin America. Her core research examines business influence on public policy decisions, the political economy of inequality, democratic governance, state capacity, and business-state relations.
Her book, Private Wealth and Public Revenue in Latin America: Business Power and Tax Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2015), examines how and when the interests of economic elites prevail in unequal democracies through comparative analysis of tax reform in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia after economic liberalization.
Before arriving at LSE, Dr. Fairfield was a Hewlett Fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute. Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, and the International Center for Tax and Development (ICTD) at the University of Sussex Institute for Development Studies. She is currently a member of ICTD’s Resource Allocation Group.
Dr. Fairfield holds a Ph.D in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an M.A. in Latin American studies and an M.S. in physics from Stanford University.