YILDIRIM, Aydin Baris

Aydin Yldirim conducts his research on International Political Economy (IPE) and specializes in international trade. After completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science at the University of Houston in the US, he completed a Research Master’s degree in Politics at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, after which he started his doctoral research.

Aydin has recently finished his doctoral project at the University of Antwerp in Belgium – defending in September 2017. During his time as a PhD candidate he examined the factors that impact cooperation in international trade. He worked on the politics of dispute settlement at the World Trade Organization (WTO) and analyzed factors that affect the compliance of WTO members with their international commitments at the WTO. He demonstrated that governments are more likely to abide by the rulings of the WTO panels when disputes involve sectors highly integrated into the so-called ‘global value chains’. His work has been published by the Review of International Organizations, World Trade Review, and Comparative European Politics.

He aims to continue his research by looking at the role of multinational firms and their impact on trade policy. In doing so, he hopes to examine the conditions under which firms are able to politically mobilize and press for their trade policy preferences, both domestically and internationally. He is specifically interested in the growing internationalization of production and firm-level micro data.  

Aydin has assisted in the teaching of undergraduate and post-graduate courses in IPE and international politics at the University of Antwerp’s Faculty of Political Sciences