Kapu Rao holds an M.A. in Political Science from Columbia University. He did his B.A. in Economics at New York University. Prior to obtaining his M.A., he worked as a modeling analyst for Nielsen. He is especially interested in experimental methodology, democracies and non-democracies, conflict studies, and developmental economics. Kapu works on Basic Income Initiatives at JFI.

April 11, 2024

Analysis

The Electric Vehicle Developmental State

BYD exemplifies transformations in Chinese industrial policy

The rise of the Chinese EV industry has been enabled not only by generous government subsidies but also by profound changes in strategy and organization, and in particular by a distinctive revival of vertical integration—at both individual firm and national…

May 3, 2019

Interviews

How Do States Pay for Wars?

An interview with Rosella Cappella Zielinski

Academic study of war in the social sciences is as old as historiography itself, and political economists have considered the economic logic of war and peace for centuries. Yet social scientists have left several questions on the financing of conflict…

November 9, 2018

Analysis

Banking with Imprecision

How medieval financiers lent in the age of uncertainty

​In 1596, Spanish troops under the leadership of the Duke of Medina-Sidonia set fire to their own ships in the waters near Cadiz. The sinking of these thirty-two vessels was a tactical necessity: a joint Anglo-Dutch navy had annihilated the…