Hadi Salehi Esfahani is a Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition, he currently serves as the Editor of the Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, the President of Middle East Economic Association, and the Director of Global Studies Initiative at the University of Illinois. He has also worked for the World Bank as a visiting staff economist and a consultant. He has received his B.Sc. in engineering from Tehran University and Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. His theoretical and empirical research is in the field of political economy of development, focusing in particular on the Middle East and North Africa region. He has published numerous articles on the role of politics and governance in fiscal, trade, and regulatory policy formation. His articles have appeared in journals The Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Development Economics, International Economic Review, Oxford Economic Review, and World Development, among others.