Professor of International Political Economy and Development, University of Glasgow

Bernhard Reinsberg is Professor of International Political Economy and Development at the University of Glasgow. He also is affiliated to the Centre for Business Research at the University of Cambridge. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Zurich, an MA in Comparative and International Studies at ETH Zurich and BA degrees in Political Science (Freie Universität Berlin) and Mathematics (University in Hagen).

His research broadly covers the political economy of international organisations - such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - and seeks to contribute to a better understanding of what drives their behaviour and when their development interventions are effective.

One line of his research examines the heterogeneous impacts of different policy conditions in International Monetary Fund lending programmes on state capacity and other sociopolitical outcomes. He also studies the institutional design determinants of contemporary international institutions such as trust funds, whereby donor countries provide earmarked funding to international development organisations. The rise of trust funds chimes with a more general trend toward governance beyond formal intergovernmental organisations in the international system.

Using primarily quantitative analysis, he is currently examining underlying determinants and potential implications of such informal governance mechanisms.