Bob Rijkers is a Senior Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group of the World Bank and a professor of political economy at Utrecht University. His research interests include state capture, corruption, and the distributional impacts of trade. His research has been published in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Human Resources, and the Journal of Development Economics. He holds a BA in Science and Social Sciences from University College Utrecht, Utrecht University and an M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Economics from the University of Oxford.