Background
I have been affiliated with UNC since 1983. Prior to that time I was a staff member for Congressman John Myers of Indiana in the US House of Representatives, I served in the Peace Corps in Cote d’Ivoire, I worked as Special Assistant to the Undersecretary for Economics Richard Cooper in the US Department of State, and I was a research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.
I received my PhD in Economics and my MPA in International Development from Princeton University. My undergraduate degree is a BSFS (Bachelors of Science in Foreign Service) from Georgetown University.
Research in International Trade and International Finance
My initial research agenda examined the interaction of international trade pressures and state-run manufacturing enterprises in the macroeconomy of an emerging economy. This combination of theoretical and structural empirical work using the example of Turkey between 1963 and 1983 became my dissertation. The dissertation was published in the Contributions to Economic Analysis series of North Holland in 1987 under the title “Economic Shocks and Structural Adjustments: Turkey after 1973”. This was the beginning of my sustained study of macroeconomic reform and international trade in Turkey that led to journal articles and invited chapters in research volumes.
I also contributed journal articles based on theoretical analyses of international trade among developing and advanced economies within the Dornbusch-Fischer-Samuelson trade framework during this time.
I was chosen as an International Affairs Fellow of the Council of Foreign Relations in 1989, and spent the academic year 1989-1990 as a visitor in the Research Department of the International Monetary Fund. My primary focus at that time was the international response to the developing-country debt crisis, but my experiences there led me to an ongoing interest in the impact of IMF programs on developing countries.
Research on the Transition from Planned to Market Economies: the Post-Soviet Experience
During the initial years after the break-up of the Soviet Union, I joined World Bank missions to Kazakhstan, Georgia and Belarus as a specialist on macroeconomic and international trade issues. I contributed to the initial Country Economic Memoranda of those countries. This experience led to the ongoing research interest in the transition experiences in the formerly Soviet economies that you’ll find evidenced in my research and publications record. The book “Crisis, Stabilization and Growth: Economic Adjustment in Transition Economies”, published in 2001 by Kluwer Academic Press, is a summary of that research.
Research on Transition Experiences in North Carolina
In the 2000s I turned to the study of adjustment of import-competing industries to the effects of trade liberalization. My prism for this research has been the textiles industry, and my work has included in-depth studies of the behavior of US textiles firms and comprehensive examinations of trading patterns worldwide as they have evolved with the removal of the system of bilateral quotas defined by the Agreement on Clothing and Textiles.
In recent years I’ve also studied the incidence and causes of poverty and unemployment in North Carolina. You’ll find working papers and references to publications in these areas in the “Research” section of this site.
Awards for University Teaching
From my service in the Peace Corps in Cote d’Ivoire and through my tenure here at Carolina, I have been devoted to improving teaching and learning outcomes at the University level. I have received a number of awards for my instruction, including
- The Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs, awarded by Harvard University in 1991.
- The William Friday/Class of 1986 Award for Excellence in Teaching, awarded in 2001.
- The Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship in Economics from 2007 to 2011.
- Kenneth Elzinga Distinguished Teaching Award, awarded by the Southern Economic Association in 2019.
- The Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2023 (given to one faculty member each year on the UNC-CH campus).
as well as Teaching Awards for both Undergraduate and Graduate Courses within the Department of Economics. I have also presented workshops and master classes in teaching economics for the American Economic Association, The World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and various universities.
Service to the University
I have served on numerous committees at Carolina through the years, including the Educational Policy Committee, the Faculty Council, and the Appointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee for the University.
In 2008 I was appointed the founding Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at UNC-Chapel Hill. I stepped down in 2009 after successfully launching this enterprise.
I was appointed Department Chair of Economics in 2011 and served in that position until the end of 2018.
I have served as the Academic Director of the Shuford Program in Entrepreneurship from 2018 to the present.
My curriculum vitae, CV_Patrick_Conway_2023, provides more details on these and other achievements.