Kathryn Lavelle

Kathryn Lavelle is the Ellen and Dixon Long Professor of World Affairs at Case Western Reserve University. Her research interests are U.S. foreign economic policy, International Organizations, the United Nations, U.S. Congress and International Organizations, Africa, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, Basle and G20 processes, the politics of stock markets as well as Congress and banking policy.

Dr. Lavelle is currently working on projects related to the domestic implementation of international financial agreements, such as the Basel Agreements, and international contributions to US law, such as the Volcker Rule. She recently published a book project on the American governing institutions that formulate financial policy titled "Money and Banks in the American Political System," released by Cambridge University Press. She derived the analytical framework for this and her other recent book on Congress and the IMF and World Bank from her experience working as a Congressional fellow on the staff of the House Committee on Financial Services for Chairman Barney Frank. Since that time, she has used extensive archival evidence and interviews to provide additional evidence for the policy process in the domestic and international arenas.

Her other recent book is a scholarly monograph "Legislating International Organization: The US Congress, the IMF, and the World Bank" (Oxford University Press, 2011), which explores the intersection of national and international politics in the American legislature with respect to the Bretton Woods institutions from their origins to the present. Her first book, "The Politics of Equity Finance in Emerging Markets" (Oxford University Press, 2004), analyzed the historical and political processes that led to the ownership structures of large firms in middle and low-income countries. She has published articles, book reviews, and chapters appearing in International Studies Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, International Organization, Review of International Organizations, The Journal of Modern African Studies, Third World Quarterly, Review of International Political Economy, International Journal of Political Economy, International Studies Review, Journal of International Affairs and The Columbia Journal of World Business.

Dr. Lavelle has held fellowships and grants from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, American Political Science Association, Hagley Museum and Library, and West Africa Research Association. In the spring semester of 2010, she was the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Global Affairs at the Munk Centre, University of Toronto. She is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and she serves on the editorial board of PS: Political Science and Politics.