Mathias Larsen Email and Phone Number

I'm a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs, jointly between the China Initiative and the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance. I study the political economy of financing green transition, focusing on China and other countries outside the global North. I draw from four years of work experience in China's primary think tank on green finance, the International Institute of Green Finance, and over 150 interviews conducted in China, Vietnam, India, Ethiopia, and Brazil, to understand not only green finance in China but also China’s role in financing green transition across the global South. I explore how China challenges several assumptions of the literature regarding the political and economic conditions required to use the state as a driver for green transition. I examine how interventionist state approaches are feasible in the global South, under different political preconditions, by using different policy tools, and while facing different challenges. I am currently writing a book about what China can tell us about the ‘green state’ as a theory.Previously, I was a dual PhD fellow in international political economy at Copenhagen Business School and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. I hold a dual Master’s degree in international business and politics from Copenhagen Business School and Rotterdam School of Management as well as a dual Master’s degree in international development from Sciences Po Paris and Peking University. I have worked for UN organizations, Chinese think tanks, and am fluent in Chinese. My research has been published in Review of International Political Economy, Global Policy, Climate Policy, Regulation & Governance, Journal of International Development, and other leading journals in the field.