Carly  Potz-Nielsen

I grew up in North Texas, in a small town just south of the Red River. Since my family is Canadian, I managed to spend 20 plus years living in Texas without a hint of a proper Texas drawl. I am a TAMS alumni, and completed my B.S. at Texas A&M University. I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in 2021.

 

I have worked as a Visiting Lecturer in the Political Science Department at Texas Christian University (2020 - 2022) and was a teaching post-doctoral fellow at Emory University (2022-2023). I was also a Post-Doctoral Lecturer and Researcher within the Chair for International Relations in the Munich School for Politics and Public Policy (Hochschule für Politik München) (2023-2024). Currently, I am an Assistant Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Technical Institute. 

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I am interested in how governments influence the way that money moves about the world. I have a background in economics, primarily macroeconomic growth models, trade, and environmental economics, but have always been unsettled by the oft-made assumption in orthodox economic theory that governments reflect the preferences of the populace. Through my work in political economy, I instead understand the national economic policies governments employ through the competing preferences within the governments themselves.

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My dissertation investigates the way that political decisions determine the movement of money around the globe. I focus on capital controls, or policies used by governments to control money entering or exiting their markets, and how governments decide whose capital gets to go where. While the debate over the effectiveness of capital controls is well-studied, most scholars treat capital controls as a single type of policy. However, each type of control impacts a distinct set of investors. By looking at the type of control, instead of the overall levels of controls, we can better understand patterns of investment and subsequent development, as well as broader economic relationships between states and private actors.