Jikon Lai is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University.
Jikon’s research interests lie at the intersection of international and comparative political economies, and international relations. His work examines how state, business and societal actors create, reproduce and sustain finance and the financial sector. He is animated by the desire to understand the interplay of domestic and international factors on financial systems. These intellectual interests are realised in several empirical domains: financial sector development and governance in East Asia, the evolution of a sovereign wealth fund in an emerging economy, regional financial architecture and Islamic finance. He has, for the most part, adopted institutional approaches in his work, but has also employed agent-centred and ideational perspectives where they are methodologically relevant.
Jikon’s research output has been published in Review of International Political Economy, New Political Economy, Journal of the Asia-Pacific Economy, Asia Europe Journal and the Australian Journal of Public Administration. He is also author of a book – ‘Financial Crisis and Institutional Change in East Asia’ – published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012.
Jikon received his doctoral degree from the Department of International Relations in the College of Asia & the Pacific at The Australian National University. He had previously studied at the University of Oxford where he obtained an M.Phil. in International Relations; and the London School of Economics and Political Science, finishing with a B.Sc. in Economics (First Class).
