Speaker Biographies
March 19, 2007
Claude Barfield is a resident scholar and the director of trade, science, and technology policy studies at AEI. He is the author or editor of a number of books on trade and science policy, including Free Trade, Sovereignty, Democracy: The Future of the World Trade Organization (AEI Press, 2001). In 1999, he coauthored Tiger by the Tail: China and the World Trade Organization (AEI Press) with Mark Groombridge. Before coming to AEI, he served in the Ford administration, on the staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, and as a co-staff director of the President’s Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties.
Michael Ferrantino joined the U.S. International Trade Commission in 1994, where he is currently lead international economist. He has served on the faculties of Southern Methodist and Georgetown Universities. His published research has focused on empirical topics in international economics, including non-tariff measures, trade facilitation, trade and environment, technological change, foreign direct investment, and intellectual property. His most recent book, Quantitative Methods for Assessing The Effects of Non-Tariff Measures and Trade Facilitation, co-edited with Philippa Dee, was published in 2005 by World Scientific Press for APEC.
J. Michael Finger retired from the World Bank in 2001, where he served as lead economist and chief of the Trade Policy Research Group, and was the initial coordinator for the bank’s Integrated Framework for Trade-Related Technical Assistance to least-developed countries. Since he left the World Bank, Mr. Finger has been a resident scholar at AEI (2001–03) and a consultant to a number of developed and developing country governments, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, and the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Trade. In 2004 and 2005 he held the Vernon F. Taylor Distinguished Professor of Economics chair at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, and he has taught at the China Foreign Affairs University, the University of Berne, the Stockholm School of Economics, and Duke University. Before working at the World Bank, Mr. Finger held key positions at the U.S. Treasury Department (1974–80) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (1970–74).
Ernest H. Preeg has been a senior fellow in trade and productivity at the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI since 2000. During his earlier career as a foreign service officer, he specialized in international trade, finance, and economic development, and was a member of the U.S. delegations to the Kennedy and Uruguay rounds of trade negotiations. He also served as deputy assistant secretary of state for international finance and development, chief economist at the U.S. Agency for International Development, White House executive director of the Economic Policy Group, and American ambassador to Haiti. He is the author of numerous books, including The Emerging Chinese Advanced Technology Superstate (Manufacturers Alliance and Hudson Institute, 2005), From Here to Free Trade in Manufactures: Why and How (Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, 2003), The Trade Deficit, the Dollar, and the U.S. National Interest (Hudson Institute, 2000), and Traders in a Brave New World: The Uruguay Round and the Future of the International Trading System (University of Chicago Press, 1995).
Amy E. Searight is a professor at the George Washington University (GWU) Elliot School of International Affairs, where she teaches courses on Japanese politics and international political economy. Her research focuses on Japanese trade policies, U.S.-Japan relations, and multilateral trade organizations. Before joining GWU, Ms. Searight served on the faculty at Northwestern University, was an advanced research fellow at the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University, and was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Monetary and Fiscal Policy at the Ministry of Finance in Japan. Recently, she was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow at the State Department.
Mireya Solís is currently a professor at the School of International Service at American University, where she teaches courses on international economic policy; Japanese political economy; relations among China, Japan, and the United States; and the politics of regional integration. Her research interests include international and comparative political economy, regional integration in East Asia, and Japanese politics and foreign policy. Ms. Solís’s book Banking on Multinationals: Public Credit and the Export of Japanese Sunset Industries (Stanford University Press, 2004) underscores the crucial role that public preferential finance has played in the expansion of Japanese multinational corporations. She has also published several journal articles and book chapters, including “Japan’s New Regionalism: The Politics of Free Trade Talks with Mexico” (Journal of East Asian Studies, 2003), “The Politics of Self-Restraint: FDI Subsidies and Japanese Mercantilism” (The World Economy, 2003), “Understanding East Asian Cross-Regionalism” (coauthored in a forthcoming issue of Pacific Affairs), and “Trading Gains for Control: International Trade Forums and Japanese Economic Diplomacy” (coauthored in a forthcoming issue of International Studies Quarterly). Ms. Solís’s current research project focuses on East Asian regionalism, with a special emphasis on Japan’s new policy to negotiate preferential trade agreements.
Andrei Zlate is currently a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Boston College. His research areas are macroeconomics, international economics, and trade. His doctoral dissertation work focuses on the co-movement of business cycles between countries that are linked by trade flows of intermediate goods. Previously, Andrei interned at AEI during 2002 and 2003, researching topics including antidumping policy, free trade agreements, and intellectual property rights.
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