About Me

I am a Ph.D. candidate studying international relations, comparative politics, and public policy in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

My dissertation research lies at the intersection of politics of trade, domestic inequality, and redistribution. In the first article, I examine how agricultural landowners have influenced the development of national education systems in an effort to reduce their labor costs. In the second article, I use a cross-national sample to test whether or not ethnic divisions result in lower levels of government expenditures on healthcare, education, and pensions. In the third article, I examine the causes of income inequality using newly available land inequality data. I am also continuing my MA research into the effect of trade density on the breakdown of domestic and international order using computational modeling techniques.

As a course instructor, I received the John Patrick Hagan Award for best graduate student instructor in Political Science for teaching Introduction to International Politics. In addition to teaching my own courses I have also served as a teaching assistant for Introduction to Comparative Politics; Introduction to American Politics; and Introduction to International Relations. I have also guided undergraduate research projects while serving as an undergraduate research coordinator for Constitutional Design and Global Production and Workers' Rights.

In the public policy arena I have work experience on the federal, state and local levels. After my completing my M.A. I served as professional, non-partisan committee staff for the North Carolina General Assembly before returning to complete my Ph.D. I have also consulted for the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) as a cost-benefit analyst. Currently, I serve on the board of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, a non-profit dedicated to enhancing the downtown of Chapel Hill.

Education

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

Ph.D. in Political Science (Expected Spring 2010).

Concentration in International Relations and Comparative Politics.

Committee: Thomas Oatley, Chair. Timothy McKeown, John Stephens, Mark Creczenzi, François Nielsen.

University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

M.A. in Political Science; Minor in Public Policy. (May 2007)

Clemson University, Clemson, SC

B.A. with Honors in Mathematics and Political Science. (May 2000)

Awards

John Patrick Hagen Award for Best Graduate Student Instructor.

Future Faculty Fellowship for Course Development.

Professional Experience

Board Member, Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, Chapel Hill, NC. (May 09 – Present)

Serving as board member for the Partnership, an organization that promotes and represents the downtown community of merchants, residents, and students to the town of Chapel Hill and the larger region.

Fiscal Analyst, Fiscal Research Division, North Carolina General Assembly, Raleigh, NC. (Nov. 07 – Jan. 09)

Served as non-partisan committee staff for the Natural and Economic Resources Appropriations Sub-Committee. Provided budgetary and policy analysis for committee members by analyzing legislative and executive branch proposals.

Senior Researcher, Policy Navigation Group, Fairfax, VA. (Aug. 06 – Nov. 07)

Prepared economic analyses of regulatory changes proposed by the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Research Interests

• International Trade
• Welfare States
• International Order
• Inequality and Redistribution
• Political Determinants of Factor Mobility
• Development and Democratization
• Economic History
• Ethnic Politics
• Computational Modeling

Conference Presentations

Pennock, Andrew. Ethnicity and Social Spending in the Developed and Developing Worlds. Presented at the Midwest Political Science Association's Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL. April 2009.

Pennock, Andrew. The Case for Using Policy Writing in Undergraduate Political Science Curricula. Presented at the Teaching and Learning Conference of the American Political Science Association. Baltimore, Maryland. February, 2009.

Pennock, Andrew. War, Peace, and Transportation: Using Computational Modeling to Explore the Effect of Transportation Technology on War. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Studies Association. San Francisco, CA. March, 2008.

Articles Under Review

Pennock, Andrew. The Case for Using Policy Writing in Undergraduate Political Science Curricula. Submitted to PS: Politics and Political Science.

Teaching Experience

Professional Associations

American Political Science Association

Midwest Political Science Association

International Studies Association

Research Interests

• International Trade
• Welfare States
• International Order
• Inequality and Redistribution
• Political Determinants of Factor Mobility
• Development and Democratization
• Economic History
• Ethnic Politics
• Computational Modeling

Current Research Projects

Endogenous Labor Mobility: How Large Agricultural Landowners Use Educational Attainment to Influence Labor Mobility

Why do some developing countries have lower levels of educational attainment than others? I argue that agricultural landowners influence educational attainment in order to hinder labor mobility. Using a specific-factors model, I show that agricultural landowners are incentivized to reduce labor mobility. I then assert that when agricultural landholdings are concentrated in the hands of a few large landholders, they are able to use their power to control education levels. I test this theory against competing hypotheses. The theory asserts that labor mobility is endogenous to the political system, a claim that contradicts the assumption of exogenous factor mobility found in standard models of trade politics.

Ethnicity and Social Spending in the Developed and Developing Worlds

Do governments in diverse societies spend as much as governments representing a homogenous population? Welfare states research largely ignores ethnic, linguistic and religious fractionalization levels as an explanation of welfare spending despite strong evidence that fractionalization effects social spending on the sub-national level. Using a 108-country sample I test whether or not various fractionalization measures predict central government spending. Preliminary findings indicate that fractionalization has a significant negative effect on central government healthcare spending.

The Causes of Income Inequality: Land Inequality, Ethnic Diversity and Educational Attainment

What explains cross-national and cross-regional variation in income inequality? This study proposes to test the competing sociological, economic and political explanations against each other. Previous studies have either ignored globalization elements (such as the effect of trade) or sociological elements (demographic information) and they have assumed that all societies have the same level of equality within the agricultural sector. I relax this assumption and improve the fit of previous models by including measures of land inequality, thereby resolving an empirical weakness that has been known for over 20 years. I hypothesize that the inclusion of land inequality accounts for the regional variation in income inequality that the other explanations (economic development, globalization, and democracy) have been unable to explain, particularly Latin America’s high levels of income inequality.

War, Peace, and Transportation: Using Computational Modeling to Explore the Effect of Transportation Technology on War

This continuation of my MA thesis research explores the effect of trade density on the breakdown of domestic and international order using computational modeling.

Awards

• John Patrick Hagan Award: Best graduate instructor in Political Science for teaching Introduction to International Politics.
• Future Faculty Fellow: University-wide award with funding to attend an intensive course on syllabus, course and exam design.

Teaching Interests

• Introduction to International Relations
• Introduction to Comparative Politics
• International Political Economy
• Comparative Welfare States
• International Organizations
• Politics of Developing Countries
• Foreign Policy
• State Formation
• Security Studies
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
• Policy Analysis

Courses Taught

• Introduction to International Politics (2005, 2009)

Courses Served as Teaching Assistant

• Introduction to Comparative Politics
• Introduction to American Politics
• Introduction to International Relations

Courses Served as Undergraduate Research Coordinator

• Constitutional Design
• Global Production and Workers' Rights

Other Teaching Experience

• Social Science Faculty at the North Carolina Governor's School (2004, 2005)
• English as a Second Language, Sarajevo, Bosnia

Contact Information

or

Andy Pennock
Department of Political Science
361 Hamilton Hall
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3265