Sherman Robinson
Sherman Robinson is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), which he joined in November 2016. Robinson is a leading expert on computable general equilibrium (CGE) simulation models, which have become a standard tool of analysis of trade and fiscal policy reform, regional integration, structural adjustment, climate change adaptation, and development strategies. His research interests include international trade, economic growth, agricultural and resource issues, climate change adaptation, macroeconomic policy, income distribution, and maximum-entropy econometrics. He has published widely on international trade, growth strategies, regional integration, income distribution, empirical modeling methodologies, Bayesian maximum entropy estimation methods, and agricultural economics. At PIIE, he has been writing on trade wars (e.g., US-China, US-Japan, US-EU), US protectionist policies, Brexit, regional trade agreements (e.g., new NAFTA, CPTPP), reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns on national and regional economies.
Robinson is also senior research fellow (emeritus) at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), senior research fellow (retired) at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and professor of economics (retired) at the University of Sussex. He was a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley; economist, senior economist, and division chief in the Research Department of the World Bank; assistant professor of economics at Princeton University; and lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics. He has been a consultant to the World Bank and has held visiting senior staff appointments at the Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture; the US Congressional Budget Office; and the President's Council of Economic Advisers (in the Clinton administration), where he largely worked on trade issues, including regional trade agreements, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/WTO negotiations, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Robinson received a BA and PhD in economics from Harvard University.