Obie Porteous, Assistant Professor of Economics

2019 Topic: Agricultural Trade and Technology Adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa

Biography:

Obie Porteous

Obie Porteous joined the Economics faculty as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2016. He does research in the fields of International Trade and Development Economics, with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa. He is particularly interested in how trade policies and trade barriers affect incentives and outcomes for local firms and consumers in developing countries and how these effects then help or hinder long-term structural transformation and economic growth. He teaches courses in international economics in the Economics and International Politics & Economics majors.

Originally from California, he completed his B.A. at the University of Chicago in 2003. After brief stints in economic journalism and at the World Bank, he worked for the international humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger (ACF) for five years in Tajikistan, Uganda, D.R. Congo, Pakistan, and Indonesia, before returning to the US to pursue his Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley, which he completed in 2016.