Jürgen Braunstein is a final year Ph.D. student working on the political economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) in small open economies. He is affiliated with the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises at the Fletcher School, Tufts University (Boston). During his studies, Jürgen has participated and presented at numerous academic conferences across North America, Europe and Australia on the subject of SWFs. He was researcher at the Kuwait Programme on Development, Governance Globalisation in the Gulf States where he worked under Professor Thatcher on one of the first databases on SWF equity investments in OECD economies. He has worked with Roubini Global Economics (London) on macro-economic issues in the Middle East and on SWFs. Jürgen has held teaching appointments in the Government Department at the LSE, and at LSE Enterprise.
Thesis
The Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds in Small Open Economies
The rise of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) as key economic actors has raised questions about their origins. Current scholarship on SWFs uses concepts and methods from the disciplines of Economics and International Relations and focuses on the examination of macroeconomic as well as geostrategic factors. This research investigates their explanatory value in accounting for different forms of SWFs.
Why do small open economies create very different types of Sovereign Wealth Funds? Are international pressures and macro-economic characteristics the principal factors affecting the particular choice of state related pools of capital, or is domestic politics equally, or even more important? This research examines the causes behind different forms of state related pools of capital in an internationalised context by investigating SWF variation in small open economies.
Supervisor: Professor Mark Thatcher
Research interests
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Political Economy
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Comparative Politics
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Small open economies & city states
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Sovereign Wealth Funds
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Policy Networks
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Emerging Markets
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Frontier Economies
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Private Equity
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State Owned Enterprises
Publications
(Forthcoming - together with Mark Thatcher) Issue Networks: Iron Triangles, Subgovernments, Policy Communities, PolicyNetworks, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
The Role of Sovereign Wealth Fund Partnerships (2014), Brief, World Investment Forum Academic Conference, Geneva.
Read online
The Novelty of Sovereign Wealth Funds: The Emporer’s NewClothes (2014). Global Policy Journal. Vol 5 [2], May.
Read online
Contact
Website: www.jbraunstein.com
Email: J.Braunstein2@lse.ac.uk