Joseph Francois

Research Areas of Research He has published on: the role of the service sector in trade, growth and development; regional economic integration; the WTO; and the social and environmental effects (sustainability impacts) of globalization. His research on the economics of services has emphasized linkages between rising complexity in production and the rising share of producer services with growth, a distinct mechanism from the consumption-side productivity trap with consumer services known as Baumol's cost disease. His research also includes computational economics (including quantitative trade policy modeling) as well as the role of regional agreements and the multilateral system in reducing economic policy uncertainty (His study (with Richard Baldwin and Richard Portes) on the Eastern Enlargement of the European Union emphasized the role of adopting the Acquis communautaire in reducing economic policy uncertainty in the East European countries joining the European Union.) The study was widely cited in the public policy debate leading up to the 2004 Enlargement. He also writes on current international economic policy.

Selected books Francois, Joseph F. and Bernard Hoekman, Behind-the-Border Policies: Assessing and Addressing Non-Tariff Measures. Cambridge University Press, 2019. ; Pelkmans, Jacques and Joseph Francois, Tomorrow's Silk Road: Assessing an EU-China Free Trade Agreement, CEPS: Brussels, 2016, , 9789461385185; Francois, Joseph F., Ganeshan Wignaraja, and Pradumna Bickram Rana. Pan-Asian Integration: Linking East and South Asia. Springer, 2009, ; Francois, Joseph F., and Clinton R. Shiells, eds. Modeling trade policy: applied general equilibrium assessments of North American free trade. Cambridge University Press, 2008, ; Baldwin, Richard E., and Joseph F. Francois, eds. Dynamic Issues in Commercial Policy Analysis. Cambridge University Press, 1999. ; Reinert, Kenneth A., and Joseph F. Francois, eds. Applied methods for trade policy analysis: A handbook. Cambridge University Press, 1997. .

Early life and education He was born in Washington DC in 1961, and is the oldest of 5 children (Joseph, Marie, Michael, Monica, and Susan). He is the son of Francis Francois and Eileen Schmelzer. He was raised in Bowie, Maryland and attended St. John's College High School. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland in 1988, after receiving a B.A. with distinction in both economics and in history from the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1982 and an M.A. in economics from UVA in 1983. He then moved to the US International Trade Commission, where from 1987 to 1993 he started as a research economist and later became Chief of Research (at the age of 28), and then acting director of Economics with the USITC. He was a research economist with the GATT/WTO from 1993 to 1996, From 1996 to 2007 he was full Professor of International Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam and research fellow of the Tinbergen Institute.

Awards and recognition He was awarded the title of GTAP research fellow for significant model and data contributions, and serves as one of three at large members on the board of the Global Trade Analysis Project. He received periodic top researcher awards from Erasmus University, an Austrian Champions in European Research award from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, He also served on the Zedillo Committee on Global Trade and Financial Architecture. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Global Economic Analysis and the World Trade Review. He is a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. (CEPR)