Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor at Seton Hall University with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science & Public Affairs and in the Department of Economics & Legal Studies. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Technical University of Munich. I earned my PhD in Political Science from UCLA. My research interests are in International and Comparative Political Economy. My methodological interests include the application and development of Causal Inference, Machine Learning, Bayesian techniques, NLP, and Time Series.

My research examines (1) how transnational commercial actors utilize national courts to hold sovereign states accountable for breaking commercial agreements, as well as the domestic consequences of these judicial rulings, and (2) the politics underlying states’ strategic choices of borrowing and default.

Currently, I am working on my book project, an extension of my dissertation titled Domesticating the International: The Uneven Enforcement of Investors’ Preferences and its Unintended Consequences. It examines when US courts choose to extend the reach of US private property rights via the application of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act and the economic consequences, if any, for the debtor state.

Beyond my work on sovereign debt, I also study financial issues in the Middle East. In a separate line of research with co-authors, I am developing papers on green finance that examine how, why, and when governments, non-governmental organizations, and global institutions finance climate change mitigation efforts.

You may contact me at: monica.widmann@shu.edu