James Robinson is Professor of  Government at Harvard University and a faculty  associate at the Weatherhead Center for International  Affairs. Professor Robinson studied economics at the London School of Economics, the University of Warwick and Yale University. He previously taught in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne, the University of Southern California and before moving to Harvard was a Professor in the Departments of Economics and Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley. His main research interest is why countries are different: particularly why some are more prosperous than others and why some are more democratic than others.