Robert H. Wade is a New Zealander, currently Professor of Global Political Economy at the London School of Economics.

He earlier worked at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University), the World Bank, Woodrow Wilson School (Princeton University), Sloan School (MIT), Watson Institute (Brown University). He carried out fieldwork in Pitcairn Island, Central Italy, India, Korea, Taiwan, Iceland. His research has focused on the Adam Smith question of the wealth of nations, and on the economic governance of the global inter-state system. Subjects include the US informal empire; the World Bank and IMF, UNCTAD, the G20; the debates about industrial policy, financial crises, and income inequality;  and the morality of professional economics.

He is author of Irrigation and Politics in South Korea(1982), Village Republics: The Economic Conditions of Collective Action in India (1988, 1994, 2007), Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asia’s Industrialization (1990, 2004). The latter won the American Political Science Association’s award of Best Book in Political Economy, 1992. He was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, 2008.