Michael Wakin

Michael is an MPhil candidate in International Relations at Mansfield College, Oxford. Before coming to Oxford, he worked as an analyst for the U.S. Department of the Treasury in Washington D.C., covering a range of issue areas from economic security to the efficacy of sanctions. Originally from New York, he graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Economics. His undergraduate thesis, titled “Prospect Theory and the Vietnam War,” applied principles of behavioral economics to interrogate the anomalous nature of U.S. policymakers’ escalatory decisions throughout the Vietnam War despite knowledge that such policies would fail to yield the intended outcomes.