I’m Qi Zhang, and you can also call me Arnold. I am a political economist and methodologies. I obtained my Ph.D. in Government from Georgetown University in August 2023. For the 2021-2022 academic year, I was a Lecturer at George Washington University’s Eliott School of Foreign Affairs.
My research focuses on the politics and distributional consequences of economic coercion. In my dissertation research, I developed a typology to describe the strategies that financial institutions have employed to cope with financial regulations pertaining to sanctions, anti-money laundering, and counter-terrorist financing. I then proposed a theory to explain financial institutions’ choice of strategies in response to state regulations. As a part of my dissertation research, I created an original bank ownership dataset and tracked ownership changes of 5,281 foreign banks between 1995 and 2020. My research has been generously supported by the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and the Georgetown University Department of Government.
Before starting the doctoral program, I received my master’s degree in Asian studies from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a bachelor’s degree from the University of International Relations of China.
