Raphaël Franck is Professor in the Institute of Economics and Law at the University of Stuttgart (Germany). His primary research interests lie in the areas of political economy and macroeconomics with regional foci on Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa from 1800 to the present. His research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Political Science Review, Econometrica, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics.