Willem Thorbecke
Senior Research Fellow

Brief Biography

Willem Thorbecke joined ADBI in June 2009. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor and then an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow at Japan's Research Institute of Economy, Trade, and Industry.

His recent research has focused on exchange rates, trade, and global imbalances. Two recent papers investigated how exchange rate changes affect the People's Republic of China's exports: "How Would an Appreciation of the RMB and Other East Asian Currencies Affect China's Exports?" Review of International Economics, 2009, with Gordon Smith; and "The Effect of Exchange Rate Changes on China's Labor-Intensive Manufacturing Exports," Pacific Economic Review, 2009, with Hanjiang Zhang. Another recent paper investigated how exchange rate volatility affects trade within East Asian production networks: "The Effect of Exchange Rate Volatility on Fragmentation in East Asia: Evidence from the Electronics Industry," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 2008.

He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Before that, he was a visiting scholar at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University.

Download Willem Thorbecke's CV.

ADBI Publications