About

Rachel L. Wellhausen, Ph.D., is a Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in international political economy. Her primary research focuses on the political economy of international investment, finance, and trade, particularly examining developing nations' policy flexibility in the context of economic globalization and how international market actors perceive and manage political risks. She has published extensively in leading political science and international relations journals and has received several prestigious awards, including the Best Book Award from the International Political Economy Society for her book "The Shield of Nationality: When Governments Break Contracts with Foreign Firms" (Cambridge University Press, 2015), the Michael Wallerstein award for the best paper in political economy, and the Mancur Olson award for the best dissertation in political economy from the American Political Science Association. Wellhausen has been supported by notable institutions such as the National Science Foundation, the Federal Reserve, and the Research Council of Norway. At UT Austin, she holds a courtesy appointment in the Business, Government, and Society Department at the McCombs School of Business and is affiliated with multiple interdisciplinary centers, including Innovations for Peace and Development, the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, the Center for European Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She has collaborated externally with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Center for Indian Country Development and Native partners to address financial service inequities in Native communities and has participated in the Project on Compliance Politics and International Investment Disputes at the University of Oslo. Wellhausen has also served on the steering committee of the International Political Economy Society. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an M.Sc. with Distinction in European Political Economy: Transition from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in Economics, English with Honors, and Interdisciplinary Studies (Russian Studies, German Studies, and Political Science) from the University of Arizona. In 2021-2022, she was a visiting scholar at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Law
• Business
• International economics
• International trade
• Monetary economics
• Financial system
• Macroeconomics
• Finance
• Industrial organization
• Microeconomics
• Political economy
• Market economy
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• Exiting Russia

  American Political Science Review · 2026-03-11

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As of February 24, 2022, over forty thousand foreign-invested firms operated in Russia, a host state that initiated an interstate war—an exceptional shock in the modern era of economic globalization. Using company registration data, we document that after 18 months of war, 33.3% of foreign-invested firms had changed ownership or become inactive. We conceptualize exit as a politicized transaction in which sellers and buyers face external pressures and bargain over terms. Concerning pressures to sell, those in consumer-oriented industries were more likely to exit. On bargaining, we find Russian state interests consequential: foreign-invested firms already under Russian managerial control were more likely to exit, whereas those in Russian strategic industries were not. Despite extraordinary economic sanctions to isolate Russia, and surging social backlash against doing business in Russia, results imply that multinationals are at best unstable tools of economic statecraft, even in the midst of war.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Naming, Praising, and Shaming Firms: Online Activism and the Russo-Ukrainian War

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Green Virtues of Chinese Protectionism: A Comparative Analysis of EU and US Responses to the China Garbage Shock

  Interventions économiques · 2026-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Can economic protectionism in the Global South induce environmental reforms in the Global North? In 2017, China enacted “Operation National Sword,” which banned the import of a subset of internationally traded waste and scrap products. This unexpected and unprecedented collapse in Chinese demand – justified in China on environmental grounds and also an initial move in the brewing US-China trade war – shook global markets. Both the European Union and United States have long relied on exports to achieve “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) waste management goals, and China had become the dominant importer of a variety of their post-industrial and post-consumer products such as waste plastics. Thus, after 2017 EU and US waste exporters had to adjust, by reducing exports and/or diverting to new foreign markets. Conceivably, the collapse in global demand for certain waste products could ripple back to EU and US waste management policy, providing a sufficient shock to advance reform. At the same time, it is well established that the EU has environmental bona fides far exceeding those of the US. We use novel quantitative data to trace the nature of the shock to exports, providing evidence that disruptions to exports manifested in ways more visible to EU audiences than those in the US. Qualitatively, we show that EU-level policy has made meaningful strides, both within the EU and internationally, whereas initially bipartisan US interest frayed, leaving the problem of adjustment to US municipalities. Our analysis departs from conventional policy debates on the links between free trade and the environment to show that protective measures – not just trade agreements – can foster new policy linkages under certain circumstances. As what we term the “China garbage shock” reinforced rather than challenge the preexisting environmental policy cleavage between the EU and US, Chinese protectionism bolstered trade-environment linkages in a most-likely case but did not overcome trade disconnects in a least-likely case.

  PublisherDOI

• Adjudicating while Fighting: Political Implications of the Ukraine-Russia Bilateral Investment Treaty

  Perspectives on Politics · 2025-03-26 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Russia’s 2014 seizure of parts of Ukraine, notably the Crimean Peninsula, set in motion a flurry of legal activity. Ukraine’s “lawfare” strategy, which aims to fight Russia via international legal means, included explicit encouragement of Ukrainian investors to file disputes under the Ukraine-Russia Bilateral Investment Treaty. We consider the resulting Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) arbitrations, the first instances of ISDS in which state parties to the treaty are actively engaged in armed conflict. Although Ukrainian actors have consistently won at ISDS arbitrations, Ukraine moved to formally withdraw from the treaty a year after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022. Developments before and since the invasion point to the diverging interests between commercial actors and their home states, the weakness of ISDS as a tool during wartime, and a reconsideration of treaty-based commitments to international investor protections. We highlight the implications of these events for several literatures in international relations.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication Data for: Exiting Russia

  Harvard Dataverse · 2025-12-12 · 1 citations

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  As of 24 February 2022, over forty thousand foreign-invested firms operated in Russia, a host state that initiated an interstate war—an exceptional shock in the modern era of economic globalization. Using company registration data, we document that after 18 months of war, 33.3% of foreign-invested firms had changed ownership or become inactive. We conceptualize exit as a politicized transaction in which sellers and buyers face external pressures and bargain over terms. Concerning pressures to sell, those in consumer-oriented industries were more likely to exit. On bargaining, we find Russian state interests consequential: foreign-invested firms already under Russian managerial control were more likely to exit, whereas those in Russian strategic industries were not. Despite extraordinary economic sanctions to isolate Russia, and surging social backlash against doing business in Russia, results imply that multinationals are at best unstable tools of economic statecraft, even in the midst of war.

  PublisherDOI

• Data Sovereignty and Development: How do Native Americans View Data Sharing by Tribal Governments?

  PS Political Science & Politics · 2024-12-23 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The Indigenous data sovereignty movement has arisen out of the ambition of Indigenous peoples to benefit from data-informed policy while preventing extractive and harmful research practices by external governments or researchers. Tribes exercise the sovereign authority to choose whether and when to share data with researchers and institutions outside their communities. To provide insight into how Indigenous peoples feel about data sharing, we document meaningful variation in a unique, nationwide survey of Native Americans. We find that respondents support their tribes in sharing data for economic benefit and that those who vote in tribal elections are particularly supportive. As tribal leaders, Native communities, and external research partners address potentially harmful data gaps and build Indigenous data resources, our findings suggest the importance of carefully considering and communicating the purpose of data collection and sharing. Broad benefit to Indigenous peoples’ economic well-being is one factor that likely increases support for data sharing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Stakeholder Cues, National Origin, and Public Opinion Towards Firms: Evidence in the Context of the First Bank in an American Indian Nation

  Business and Politics · 2024-02-15 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract When and how does stakeholder credibility matter in shaping public opinion? We explore this question in a real-world setting: in order to fight its citizens’ financial exclusion—a key barrier to development in Indian Country—American Indian Nation “A” negotiated the first entry of the first bank to its reservation. The bank is owned by American Indian Nation “B.” To the Federal Reserve, the bank branch is a potential proof-of-concept for the capacity of tribe-to-tribe investment to improve capital access in underserved Native communities. The bank’s success ultimately depends on whether Nation A’s citizens use its services; in the months before its opening, all three stakeholders independently attempted to influence public opinion toward the bank. We collaborated to conduct a first-of-its-kind survey of Nation A’s tribal members, finding high baseline buy-in especially given the bank’s nationality, but weak and even counterproductive treatment effects of pro-banking cues provided by Nation A and the Federal Reserve. Our results make clear the practical benefits of theory-building around stakeholder credibility, and the crucial role of individual attitudes in the political economy of development.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Global Value Chains as a Constraint on Sovereignty: Evidence from Investor–State Dispute Settlement

  International Studies Quarterly · 2022-12-20 · 13 citations

  articleSenior author

  Abstract That economic integration constrains state sovereignty has been a longstanding concern and the subject of much study. We assess the validity of this concern in the context of two very particular components of contemporary economic globalization: global value chain (GVC) integration and Investor–State Dispute Settlement (ISDS). First, we document that host states have abandoned nearly 24 percent of regulations disputed by private investors in ISDS between 1987 and 2017. This behavior is puzzling because ISDS only requires host states to provide monetary compensation to investor-claimants and not the abandonment of disputed regulations. We theorize that host states are more likely to abandon a disputed regulation when the claimant has a greater potential to disrupt GVCs in the host economy. We then employ the non-parametric difference-in-differences estimator by Imai, Kim, and Wang (2021) and find that ISDS filings cause substantial decreases in GVC trade. Following this result, we provide descriptive statistics and qualitative evidence that support our core theoretical proposition that multinational corporations (MNCs) with the potential to disrupt GVC integration are more likely to see host states changing regulations in their favor. Our argument and evidence suggest that GVC integration can grow an MNC’s power to such an extent that the host state abandons a regulation that the MNC disputes.

  PublisherDOI

• Political Risk and International Investment Law

  Annual Review of Political Science · 2022 · 34 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political economy
  • Political Science

  International investment law provides a means for states to mitigate political risks that foreign investors face inside their borders. Its status quo includes thousands of international investment agreements (IIAs) and Investor–State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), a dispute resolution mechanism in which foreign, private investors sue host states in ad hoc international tribunals in pursuit of monetary compensation for property rights violations. In this review, we survey the vast contemporary literature on this regime to evidence the ways in which scholars have challenged the purported original goals of international investment law and its distributional consequences. In light of this literature's accomplishments, we highlight opportunities for a refocusing of international relations scholars’ research agenda on dynamics of continuity and change in the regime. The status quo in international investment law is fragile, and, in our view, the regime is on the brink of a major shift toward prioritizing state sovereignty well above political risk mitigation.

  PublisherDOI

• Replication Data for: International Investment Law and Foreign Direct Reinvestment

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-11-16

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  One goal of the law is to provide a means to return disputing parties to cooperation. The prevailing expectation is that international investment law largely does not do this; rather, an aggrieved foreign investor sues the host state as a last resort and divests. I use a new database of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) arbitrations and firm-level bilateral investment to show that, in fact, claimant investors reinvest in the host state at least 31 percent of the time (between 1990 and 2015). Among investors who file for arbitration, and controlling for sector, important correlates of reinvestment include the claimant's legal strategy; the extent of the claimant's grievance and success; and the incidence of post-arbitration litigation. Despite unique aspects of its institutional design, the de facto international investment regime can help solve host state time-inconsistency problems consistent with standard expectations of law. Whether the probability of reinvestment is high enough to reinforce host state commitments to this controversial regime is an open question.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Renard Sexton

  Emory University

  15 shared

• Michael G. Findley

  The University of Texas at Austin

  15 shared

• Cameron Ballard-Rosa

  Stanford University

  6 shared

• Layna Mosley

  The Ohio State University

  6 shared

• Leslie Johns

  5 shared

• Calvin Thrall

  Columbia University

  5 shared

• Kenneth A. Oye

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  4 shared

• Gautam Mukunda

  University of California System

  3 shared

Labs

• The Texas Politics ProjectPI

  The Texas Politics Project conducts regular, non-partisan, statewide polls of registered voters in Texas, and makes the results and data available for public use.

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2012