Erik Peinert

Erik Peinert is a fourth year PhD candidate in comparative politics and international relations at Brown University. His research interests include the political economy of advanced industrial states of Europe and North America, business-state relations, institutional change, antitrust, intellectual property rights, and the politics of economic ideas. His dissertation project seeks to understand why policy in advanced industrial democracies has shifted back and forth in the long run between supporting domestic monopolies and enforcing price competition. Erik has a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and M.A. from Brown University.

Research interests

Comparative and International Political Economy
Business-State Relations
Antitrust, Price Competition, and Intellectual Property Rights
The Politics of Trade and Finance
The Politics of Economic Ideas
Institutional Change
Comparative Historical Analysis
Economic Inequality

Visiting projects and objectives

During my time at CEE, I am completing research for my dissertation, which examines why policy in advanced industrial democracies has shifted back and forth in the long run between supporting domestic monopolies and enforcing price competition, using the historical cases of the United States and France. I am using a combination of original archival research and historical statistics to argue that this pattern is the result of an interaction between the economic beliefs that motivate policy choices and the diminishing material returns to those policies over time.