Büthe, Tim

My research is driven by two primary interests that cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. First, I seek to advance our understanding of how political, legal, and economic institutions not only constrain but also empower some stakeholders vis-à-vis others and how these distributional consequences affect institutional persistence and change in the long run. Second, I seek to understand how market and non-market processes interact in specific issues areas that are intrinsically important The resulting research shows, for instance, that the global governance ("transnational regulation") of product and financial markets is deeply political even when it takes place in non-governmental bodies of technical experts (transnational or private regulation). Other major projects focus on the foreign direct investment (FDI), especially the costs and benefits of using international trade and investment treaties to reduce the political risks FDI faces in developing countries, and foreign aid, especially the distinctiveness of private humanitarian and development aid. A newer NSF-funded project analyzes the international dimension of antitrust/competition policy and builds the first comprehensive database of cross-nationally comparable data on antitrust (competition) law and enforcement.