Rawi Abdelal

Rawi E. Abdelal is a Professor at Harvard Business School in the Business, Government, and International Economy Unit. His primary expertise is international political economy, and he is a faculty associate of Harvard's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.

Professor Abdelal's first book, National Purpose in the World Economy, won the 2002 Shulman Prize as the outstanding book on the international relations of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. He recently completed his second book, Capital Rules, which explains the evolution of the social norms and legal rules of the international financial system. Abdelal is currently at work on The Price of Power, a book that explores the relationships among political leadership, state-building, foreign investment, and geopolitics in the Russian energy sector.

In 1999 Abdelal earned a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, where he had received an M.A. in 1997. At Cornell Abdelal's dissertation won the Kahin Prize in International Relations and the Esman Prize. He was a President's Scholar at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he received a B.S. with highest honors in Economics in 1993. Recent honors include Harvard Business School's Robert F. Greenhill Award and the Student Association's Faculty Award for outstanding teaching in the Required Curriculum. [ [http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=ovr&facEmId=rabdelal%40hbs.edu Rawi E. Abdelal - Harvard Business School ] ]

Books

*Abdelal, Rawi, Yoshiko M. Herrera, Alastair Iain Johnston, and Rose McDermott, eds. Measuring Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

*Abdelal, Rawi, ed. The Rules of Globalization: Case Book. Singapore: World Scientific, 2008.

*Abdelal, Rawi. Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007.

*Abdelal, Rawi. National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001. (Winner of the 2002 Shulman Prize for Outstanding Book on International Relations.) [ [http://drfd.hbs.edu/fit/public/facultyInfo.do?facInfo=pub&facEmId=rabdelal%40hbs.edu Publication - Rawi E. Abdelal ] ]

Personal

Rawi Abdelal has been quoted as having "unexpected" sources of inspiration for his research. For instance, in his award-winning book National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective, he referred to the help he received from Shakespeare and Hamlet:

"When Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's boyhood friends, come to visit him in Denmark, the young prince refers to his homeland as a prison. When Rosencrantz disagrees, Hamlet explains the difference in their opinions: 'There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.' That's what I wanted to get at theoretically and analytically, the question of how to talk about a society's point of view about its relationship with other countries economically."

[ [http://www.leadingresearch.hbs.edu/story01.html Leading Research - Aftermath of Empire: Research by Rawi Abdelal ] ]

During a 2008 classroom discussion, he also quoted Jay-Z's popular music video "Blue Magic" as signalling a popular culture "roadpost" regarding the decline of the U.S. dollar. Students were also encouraged by his quoting of popular 1990's movie Fight Club as a sign of the growing sense of inequality engendered by globalization.

Education

Rawi Abdelal graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1993 (Highest Honors) with a Bachelors of Science degree in Economics. In 1997 he received a Master of Arts in Government from Cornell University, and complete a PhD in Government from Cornell in 1999. [http://www.people.hbs.edu/rabdelal/Abdelal_CV.pdf]

References