Prof. Xenia Matschke (IDEAS), assistant professor of economics, has been promoted to associate professor with tenure at the recent April 21 meeting of the UConn Board of Trustees. Her promotion and tenure come into effect August 23, 2009.

Professor Matschke, a native of Germany, joined the UConn Department of Economics in the fall of 2004. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches microeconomics and international trade both at the undergraduate and graduate level at UConn. She and her husband Gautam Tripathi (IDEAS), who is an associate professor at the Department of Economics, live in Mansfield together with their two sons, ages 2 and 7.

In her research, Professor Matschke mainly focuses on questions of trade policy determination, although she has also worked in other areas of economics. Her research has been published in leading economics journals, such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of International Economics. In her 2006 piece in the American Economic Review, she and a coauthor find evidence that labor market considerations, and in particular labor lobby interests, play a significant role in shaping U.S. trade policy. While probably not surprising to the economic layman, these findings contradict previous work that claimed that trade policy is primarily shaped by capital owner interests and that the inclusion of labor market variables does not help us better understand trade protection at the industry level.

---