Rate My Professor James Lake

James Lake is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the Haslam College of Business, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he has served since Fall 2022. Previously, he was Associate Professor from Fall 2018 to Fall 2022 and Assistant Professor from Fall 2012 to Fall 2018 at Southern Methodist University, earning tenure there and serving as director of graduate studies. Lake holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Johns Hopkins University (2012), an M.A. in Economics from Johns Hopkins (2007), an M.Phil. in Economics with first class honors from Monash University (2006), a B.Econ with first class honors from Monash (2003), and a B.Acc. from Monash (2002).

His research interests center on international trade, including political economy of trade agreements, tariffs, preferential trade agreements, customs unions, free trade agreements, labor market effects, inequality, and trade-related redistribution. Key publications include 'Local labor market effects of the 2002 Bush steel tariffs' (with Ding Liu, AEJ: Economic Policy, 2025), 'Trade and US inequality in the Tokyo Round' (with Andrew Greenland and John Lopresti, Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming), 'The 2020 US Presidential election and Trump's wars on trade and health insurance' (with Jun Nie, European Journal of Political Economy, 2023), 'Contesting an International Trade Agreement' (with Matt Cole and Ben Zissimos, Journal of International Economics, 2021), 'Phase out tariffs, phase in trade?' (with Tibor Besedes and Tristan Kohl, Journal of International Economics, 2020), 'Tariff bindings and the dynamic formation of Preferential Trade Agreements' (with Moise Nken and Halis M. Yildiz, Journal of International Economics, 2020), and 'Dynamic formation of Preferential Trade Agreements: The role of flexibility' (Canadian Journal of Economics, 2019). Lake serves as Associate Editor of the Canadian Journal of Economics since 2022, is a CESifo Research Network Affiliate since 2018, and a Board member of the Midwest International Economics Group since 2015. He received the Provost's Emerging Leaders Program award in 2020 and the Barbara and James Mangum Teaching Award in 2017. Lake advises PhD students, with graduates placed at institutions such as the University of Miami Ohio, Analysis Group, and Korea Development Institute, and teaches PhD microeconomic theory and undergraduate international economics at UTK.