Caitlin Ainsley is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington.  Her primary research interests include monetary and currency policy, the institutional design of central banks, and comparative political institutions.  Her dissertation, which she completed in 2016 at Emory University, is a comparative study of central bank appointments, which focuses on how economic volatility and uncertainty affect appointment strategies and potentially undermine the conventional wisdom concerning the benefits of monetary policy delegation to an independent central bank.  Her current work builds on this line of inquiry to examine the implications of transparency in the policymaking process as well as the management (and manipulation) of exchange rates in emerging markets.  At the University of Washington, she teaches Ph.D.-level courses in applied game theory as well as undergraduate courses in game theory and the politics of economic policymaking.