Eric Weese
Program
Junior Fellow Academy
Appointment
Junior Fellow, Institutions, Organizations and Growth
Institution
Yale University
Country
USA 
Eric Weese is a CIFAR Junior Fellow in the Institutions, Organizations and Growth program and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Yale University. In 2010, he completed one-year postdoctoral fellowship at Hitotsubashi University, supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Originally from Ottawa, Eric obtained his PhD in Economics in 2009 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Daron Acemoglu, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo as his thesis committee. He also holds a BA in Economics from Yale University.
Eric’s research deals with political jurisdictions and their boundaries, focusing on why some political units are absorbed by their neighbours, while others remain independent. For example, small, well-off jurisdictions are extremely reluctant to merge with larger and poorer ones, regardless of whether the jurisdictions in question are European colonies during decolonization or Japanese municipalities during a recent set of municipal mergers. Higher levels of government can offer incentives for different kinds of mergers to occur, and in the Japanese case, if the national government had offered stronger incentives for richer municipalities to participate in mergers, this would have led to better outcomes. By using data on past municipal mergers in Japan, Eric hopes to identify the advantages and disadvantages of having larger municipalities.
Eric’s research deals with political jurisdictions and their boundaries, focusing on why some political units are absorbed by their neighbours, while others remain independent. For example, small, well-off jurisdictions are extremely reluctant to merge with larger and poorer ones, regardless of whether the jurisdictions in question are European colonies during decolonization or Japanese municipalities during a recent set of municipal mergers. Higher levels of government can offer incentives for different kinds of mergers to occur, and in the Japanese case, if the national government had offered stronger incentives for richer municipalities to participate in mergers, this would have led to better outcomes. By using data on past municipal mergers in Japan, Eric hopes to identify the advantages and disadvantages of having larger municipalities.