Prof. Paul Vaaler

Professor Paul M. Vaaler has been a member of the SME Department since 2007. Prior to that he was on the faculty of Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy and the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) School of Business. Professor Vaaler is also a faculty member at the University of Minnesota Law School. In 2019-2020, Professor Vaaler was a Fulbright Scholar studying in South Africa. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of business, law and politics: understanding long-term performance stability trends and their competition (antitrust) policy implications for firms in the US; understanding how migrants from developing countries remit money and ideas to fund, found and grow new businesses in developing countries with poor legal infrastructure; and how elections change the attractiveness of new democracies for lending and investment. His courses address business, legal and public policy issues associated with managing intellectual property in firms, negotiating investment projects with the governments of developing countries, and structuring public-private partnerships. Professor Vaaler is the author and editor of books published by Kluwer Academic Publishers, MIT Press, and Routledge Press as well as journal articles published in leading academic journals. Professor Vaaler has served as a consultant to firms, government agencies and international organizations, including the World Bank where he assisted in the development of strategies to attract more investment in West Africa from migrant diaspora communities. Professor Vaaler is a lawyer with private practice and government experience. He received his B.A. in History from Carleton College, his M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, his J.D. from Harvard Law School, and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.