Isabela Mares (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1999) is Associate Professor of Political Science. Her research and teaching interests include comparative political economy and comparative social policy. She is the author of The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development (Cambridge University Press 2003), which won the Gregory Luebbert Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in comparative politics. Her book Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment (Cambridge University Press, 2006) explores the consequences of the growth of the fiscal burden on employment outcomes in advanced industrialized economies. Professor Mares is currently writing a book titled The Great Divergence in Social Protection, which examines health and pension reforms in Latin America and East Asia.

Prior to joining the Columbia Political Science Department in 2006, Professor Mares was Assistant and then Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

Professor Mares is on leave for the 2011-12 academic year.