Professor advances public service in global economy

Jeffrey Bernstein has always been an early adopter of consumer electronics. Be it the latest stereo, VCR or compact disc player, Bernstein was one of the first kids in his neighborhood in Deerfield, Ill., to procure the newest offering.

“I’m a gadget junkie, and many electronic devices were made in Japan when I was growing up,” says Bernstein.

That desire for things electronic first sparked Bernstein’s interest in the Land of the Rising Sun, and it has now blossomed into a career. An assistant professor at UW–Madison, Bernstein is an expert in international trade and industrial organization, with a geographic focus on Japan.

He joined the faculty last fall through the university’s strategic hiring program of the Madison Initiative, a four-year investment plan to strengthen the university as it provides students an outstanding education and to help Wisconsin expand its competitiveness in the global economy.

Bernstein holds a joint appointment with the La Follette School of Public Affairs and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics.

Bernstein’s hiring coincides with La Follette’s development of a master’s degree in international public affairs. The program began Sept. 5 with nine students.

“With the master’s in international public affairs, La Follette graduates will bring their expertise to bear on international institutions or government agencies, where knowledge of international affairs is increasingly important,” says Bernstein.

John F. Witte, director of La Follette and professor of political science, says the international master’s degree is a natural extension of the school’s domestic master’s program in public management and policy analysis.

“We were feeling a void without an international focus to our curriculum,” says Witte. “The world is shrinking, and international aspects are coming into play from all fields, especially in domestic jobs.”

It is anticipated that graduates of the new master’s program will obtain employment with private sector businesses, international consulting firms and government agencies, from the U.S. State Department to the World Bank to the International Monetary Fund.

Bernstein was the first faculty member hired to teach in the program. He has developed courses on global trade and competition policies, comparative business-government relations, and trade and economic growth in East and Southeast Asia.

He received his Ph.D. in business economics from Harvard University in 1998. Before coming to Madison, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow in Harvard’s program on U.S.-Japan relations.

As an undergraduate at Amherst College, Bernstein learned to speak Japanese and spent a semester studying near Tokyo. He returned to Japan as a Fulbright scholar after graduation and before enrolling at Harvard.

Since Bernstein’s was hired last year, three other professors have joined UW–Madison through the strategic hiring program to teach in the international public affairs program: Charles Engel, an expert in international macroeconomics from the University of Washington; Melanie Manion, an expert on China from the University of Rochester; and David Weimer, an expert on policy and benefit-cost analysis who is working on Internet surveying and environmental policy, also from Rochester.

Witte says two other offers have been extended, and the school is recruiting for another professor.

“The strategic hiring program feeds to La Follette’s strength of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching, research and learning,” Witte says. “We need increasingly interdisciplinary approaches in the future to address the world’s problems. We have been able to build on that strength in the international public affairs program, which we absolutely could not offer without the strategic hiring program.”