Andrew Kerner
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science; 2013-14 Program in International and Comparative Studies Fellow in Political Economy and Development. University of Michigan.

The last 30 years has seen a dramatic “financialization” of pension systems as governments, particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe, have replaced or complimented their defined benefit pay-as-you-go pension systems with financed, defined contribution alternatives. One side-effects of this switch has been a significant increase in the number of citizens whose welfare is directly tied to the movements of financial markets. This talk examines the political implications of this shift with respect to voting patterns, popular attitudes towards the market, and the sort of macroeconomic performance that citizens demand. The talk will place this recent round of pension reform and its effects in the context of other government initiated expansions of capital ownership, including Thatcher's enterprise society and Eastern European privatization in the early 1990s.

Andrew Kerner is an assistant professor of Political Science and a faculty associate at the Center for Political Studies at University of Michigan. He received his PhD from Emory University (2009) and BA from Connecticut College (2002). Professor Kerner studies the politics of corporate finance. He is particular interested in and writes about foreign direct investment, corporate governance and the role of pension funds and pension reform in the political economy of stock market development. He is currently working on a book project that explores the political implications of pension reform.
As fellow, Professor Kerner developed and taught the course The Politics of Debt in Fall 2013.