7d01 Southwestern University: Profile

Economics & Business

Kenneth Roberts

Professor of Economics

Areas of expertise
Agrarian change in developing countries, internal and international migration, financial markets


Courses Taught Regularly (click on course for recent syllabus)

The Economy of China

Finance

Economic Development


Education

PhD, University of Wisconsin at Madison
MBA, Wharton School of Finance, University of Pennsylvania
BBA with Honors, The University of Texas at Austin

Positions

Hugh Roy and Lillie Cullen Chair in Economics
Southwestern University
May 01, 1996 - present

Research

My research is on agrarian change and its effect on employment, livelihood, and mobility of rural people.  I spent three years in Mexico studying the effect of the Green Revolution on peasants in the state of Guanajuato.  Then I worked for the Institute of Latin American Studies at UT-Austin studying Mexican migration to the United States, and have continued to do research in that field.  Since the mid-1990s I have studied Chinese rural-to-urban migration, the largest migration in human history.  My most recent research topic is on rural change in the Hill Country of central Texas.


Publications

(See vita for coauthors)

"Migration and Agrarian Change" Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming 2012.

"The Role of Children in the Migration Decisions of Rural Chinese Women" Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming.

"The Settlement of Rural Migrants in Urban China - Some of China's Migrants are not Floating Anymore" Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies 9:3, 2011

"The Impact of Circular Migration on the Social Position of Women in Rural China" Feminist Economics 16:1, 2010.

"The Changing Profile of Chinese Labor Migration" in Zhongwei Zhao and Fei Guo (eds.) Transition and Challenge: China's Population at the Beginning of the 21st Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

"Patterns of Temporary Labor Migration of Rural Women from Anhui and Sichuan" The China Journal 52, 2004.

"Fortune, Risk and Remittances:  An Application of Options Theory to Participation in Village-Based Migration Networks" International Migration Review 37:4, 2004.

"Female Labor Migrants to Shanghai:  Temporary 'Floaters' or Settlers?" International Migration Review  36:2, 2002.

"The Determinants of Occupational Choice of Labor Migrants to Shanghai" China Economic Review 12:1, 2001.

"The Floating Population of Shanghai in the mid-1990s" Asia and Pacific Migration Journal 8:4, 1999.

"China's 'Tidal Wave' of Migrant Labor:  What Can We Learn from Mexican Undocumented Migration to the United States?" International Migration Review 31:2, 1997.

"Technology Transfer in the Mexican Bajío:  Seeds, Sorghum,  and Socioeconomic Change,"  in Ina Rosenthal-Urey (ed.) Regional Impacts of U.S.-Mexican Relations.  La Jolla, California:  Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California at San Diego, 1986

"Agrarian Structure and Labor Mobility in Rural Mexico,"  Population and Development Review 8:2, June, 1982.


Interests

fly fishing and ranching

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