Neil G. Ruiz is a Ph.D. candidate specializing in the fields of political economy and comparative politics. His work focuses on the intersection of the study of state institutions, international migration, and economic development. His dissertation asks why do countries develop institutions for exporting their labor? He proposes a theory by using the Philippines as a case to investigate the intimate connections between state control of education and migration on the one hand, and economic development on the other. He argues that the active role of the state in labor export can be explained by the lack of state control in other industries, especially the private market for higher education.
Neil is currently a Research Fellow at The Brookings Institution in Washington, DC for the 2006-2007 academic year where he is based in the Global Economy and Development Program to complete the writing of his dissertation. He has served as a consultant for the Philippines Remittance Project at the Asian Development Bank and a summer research associate/consultant at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC. He holds a masters' degree in Economic History from Oxford University (St. Antony's College) and a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Political Economy of Development, Comparative Public Policy, Politics of Globalization, Political Economy of International Migration, Entrepreneurship in Developing Countries, Southeast and East Asian Politics, Southern African Politics
Neil was a teaching fellow at Harvard University where he received two distinguished teaching awards for the following courses: Human Societies (Sociology, Fall 2002) and Deviance and Social Control (Sociology, Spring 2002). He also was a teaching fellow for a graduate course at Harvard Graduate School of Education on “Globalization, Education and Economic Development” (Fall 2004). He also was a teaching assistant for an undergraduate course on Justice taught by Professor Joshua Cohen and American Foreign Policy taught by Professor Stephen Van Evera (Political Science, Fall 2005).
Neil received an MIT Public Service Fellowship in 2004 to establish the Philippine Emerging Startups Open (PESO), a business plan competition in the Philippines for the purpose of promoting world class, innovation-fueled entrepreneurship that will contribute to Philippine economic development. PESO serves as a vehicle to not only provide monetary incentives for new Philippine startups, but also to transfer knowledge and expertise from MIT, and to promote closer collaboration between the academic, professional, industrial and financial communities in the Philippines. The project has won the MIT “Best New Service Project” Award and was featured in the Sunday version of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. PESO achieved major partnerships with prominent Philippine businesses and foundations, and the Philippine President’s Center for Entrepreneurship.
Social Entrepreneurial Activities
Neil and his team, CentroMigrante, have won the Grand Prize of the MIT$100K Entrepreneurship Competition. CentroMigrante, Inc., combines developmental architecture with a self-help business model to offer a sustainable solution to the urban slum problem that migrant communities face. He was also part of two winning teams in the 2006 MIT IDEAS Competition for projects to help rural communities in the Philippines build small and medium enterprises in the peanut industry and also to help rebuild coral reefs.
Office: The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-885-1497
email: nruiz@mit.edu
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)