ByungKoo Kim
Welcome!
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan.
My research interests lie in international political economy and quantitative methodology. More specifically, I study how deepening global value chains reshape the landscape of international trade cooperations. In my dissertation, I investigate how expanding global production networks align the interests of domestic economic actors across countries to introduce growing complexity to the institutional design of trade agreements. My dissertation also explores the political implications of countries’ positions in global production networks toward trade agreements. One of my research in this strand is published in Economics & Politics which addresses why countries seek to occupy the central position(hub) in trade agreement networks in the context of furthering competitive advantages in global value chains.
I also take interest in advancing quantitative research methods with a particular focus on empirical models for complex networks and text data. Two of my research projects employ dynamic clustering techniques for countries’ development policies and global production networks to map and analyze the global economic structure. Another research project develops a Bayesian topic model to analyze text data with network structure. Finally, I am working on developing latent space models for complex networks (e.g. networks with directed and weighted edges, dynamic and sparse network data with a hierarchical structure) with applications to US Appeals Court and international trade.
I am currently serving as one of the co-organizers of Interdisciplinary Seminar in Social Science Methodology (I3SM) for 2022-2023 academic year.
