David Bearce

Graduate School Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award Winner

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 16:26:53 +0000

Graduate School Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award Winner Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 04/26/2018 - 10:26

Congratulations to Dr. David Bearce for being awarded the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award from the CU Boulder Graduate School! The award recognizes faculty members who are dedicated to the advising and teaching of graduate students, as well as improving the quality of graduate school education. Individuals were nominated by administrators, faculty, students, or staff, and letters from student advisees were received as well. Only four faculty members were chosen to received this award, from across campus.

Graduate School Newsletter

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Meet David Bearce

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Dec 2017 15:43:48 +0000

Meet David Bearce Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/04/2017 - 08:43

Emma Piller

Professor in Political Science and International Affairs

David Bearce, both a Political Science and International Affairs professor, says his earliest memories were of his time spent in Kenya when his father joined the Peace Corps.

“The Kenyan government wanted professors to train Kenyans to teach, so you can’t just take college kids,” Bearce says. “If you want professors, you have to be willing to take the professor’s partner and children. So the whole family went to Kenya for two years, and that’s where I started school.” Because Kenya had only gained its independence less than a decade earlier, Bearce remembers a strong British post-colonial presence. “I came back to the US with a British accent,” he says.

Growing up, he had always been exposed to worldly events. “I’ve been interested in politics from the beginning, I just wasn’t sure if I would make it my career.” Bearce earned his undergraduate degree at Davidson College during which time he studied abroad in the South of France. Upon his return to the US, he had no intention of becoming a professor.

Bearce began working at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington D.C. after earning his undergraduate. “I wanted to advance in Brookings but would need a PhD. I also came from an academic family so I started to think more about teaching--if I did that, I would need a PhD.” Either way, he would need to go back to school.

After earning his doctorate at Ohio State, he began working at the University of Pittsburgh. It wasn’t until ten years later that he was offered a position at the University of Colorado and chose to move out to Boulder. He now holds a unique position of teaching in both the political science and international affairs departments.

Within the Political Science Department, Bearce has been conducting research on voter attitudes surrounding both immigration and trade policy. “Voters--and this isn’t just true in the United States, but voters in general--do not like immigrants,” he says. “This creates an unfortunate tradeoff between democracy and immigration. If you let voters decide what they want, the median voter wants a closed border and does not want anyone else to come in.” Despite this realization, however, Bearce and his team have gradually seen immigration policies become more open.

“This is an awkward thing because it isn’t what voters want. So the question is why is this happening?” If voters aren’t pushing legislators to open borders, then Bearce suggests it is a result of special interest pressure. “These are big businesses in declining industries who need low skill but cheap labor. Alternatively, you have some high skill firms that are complaining they don’t have enough high-tech engineers and programmers.”

“Oddly enough, if you are in favor of immigration policy, then your ally is American big business.” Free trade and less restrictive immigration policies generally lower domestic prices, but Bearce’s research finds voters are more concerned with the fear of losing jobs. Because the public thinks more like a producer than a consumer in this regard, special interests are stronger advocates for open borders. “So if you block the special interests,” he says, “all we would get are more restrictive immigration policies.”

To read more on Professor Bearce’s work in open trade policy and voter trends, click: International Labor Mobility and the Variety of Democratic Political Institutions

Professor Bearce and several other CU Boulder educators recently attended the International Political Economy Society Conference where he and three others presented their research.

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2017 International Political Economy Society Conference

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Nov 2017 17:15:44 +0000

2017 International Political Economy Society Conference Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/28/2017 - 10:15

Several CU Boulder Political Science faculty and grad students attended the 2017 IPES Conference last week to present their most recent research. CU representatives included CU faculty Andy Baker, David Bearce, and Adrian Shin. The International Political Economy Society (IPES) “provides an annual forum for scholars of IPE to present their best new work in progress to an informed and critical scholarly audience". The annual conference is centered on a small number (approximately 75 each year) of carefully screened and selected papers. More information about participants and their work can be found on the IPES website.

IPES Website

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Does Institutional Design Matter? A Study of Trade Effectiveness and PTA Flexibility/Rigidity.

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 21:29:56 +0000

Does Institutional Design Matter? A Study of Trade Effectiveness and PTA Flexibility/Rigidity. Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/19/2017 - 15:29

Bearce DH, Eldredge CD, Jolliff BJ. INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY. 60 (2) (June 01, 2016): 307-316.

Abstract:
This article examines the trade effect of flexibility design features within preferential trading arrangements (PTAs). Using a gravity model of bilateral trade that incorporates multilateral trade resistance, we report three main results. First, unconstrained escape provisions undermine the effectiveness of PTAs when it comes to increasing trade. Second, adding some restrictions to these escape provisions more than offsets the negative effect of unconstrained escape, leading to more effective PTAs than those without escape options. Third, adding more restrictions beyond a certain point serves only to make PTAs less effective. Thus, both too much institutional flexibility and too much institutional rigidity reduces the ability of PTAs to promote trade. However, fitting these results to the descriptive data makes it appear that most PTAs would be even more trade effective if they included greater restrictions on the use of their escape provisions. Consequently, it appears that policymakers generally choose fewer escape restrictions than would be optimal in terms of trade performance.

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“Does Institutional Design Matter? A Study of Trade Effectiveness and PTA Flexibility/Rigidity"

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 22:28:33 +0000

“Does Institutional Design Matter? A Study of Trade Effectiveness and PTA Flexibility/Rigidity" Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/18/2016 - 16:28

David Bearce, Cody Eldredge and Brandy Jolliff. (forthcoming). “Does Institutional Design Matter? A Study of Trade Effectiveness and PTA Flexibility/Rigidity," International Studies Quarterly. This paper examines the trade effect of flexibility design features within preferential trading arrangements (PTAs). Using a gravity model of bilateral trade that incorporates multilateral trade resistance, it reports three main results. First, unconstrained escape provisions are bad for PTA trade effectiveness. Second, adding some restrictions to these escape provisions more than offsets the negative effect of unconstrained escape, leading to PTAs that are more trade effective than those without escape options. Third, adding more restrictions beyond a certain point only makes PTAs less trade effective. Thus, while too much institutional flexibility is bad for trade, so is too much institutional rigidity. However, when fitting these results to our descriptive data, it appears that most PTAs would be more trade effective if they had more restrictions on the use of their escape provisions. Thus, it appears that policymakers have generally under-selected for PTA escape restrictions.

David Bearce, Cody Eldredge and Brandy Jolliff. (forthcoming). “Does Institutional Design Matter? A Study of Trade Effectiveness and PTA Flexibility/Rigidity," International Studies Quarterly. This paper examines the trade effect of flexibility design features within preferential trading arrangements (PTAs).

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