Jonathan Eaton is Distinguished Professor of Economics at Pennsylvania State University. He has worked on a number of issues in international economics. After receiving a Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1976, he and Mark Gersovitz developed a model of sovereign default which has become a standard tool for analyzing government borrowing in international capital markets. Subsequent work with Gene Grossman investigated strategic trade policy and work with Maxim Engers concerned the efficacy of sanctions in the international economy. His research in the last two decades, joint with Samuel Kortum, has analyzed the roles of technology and trade in the global economy. Their 2002 Econometrica article, "Technology, Geography, and Trade," awarded the Frisch Medal by the Econometric Society, develops what is now sometimes called the EK model of trade. It provides a framework using Ricardo’s simple idea of comparative advantage to understand and to analyze quantitatively bilateral trade flows in a general equilibrium setting among many countries in many products. The framework has since been applied in numerous studies to address such diverse issues as the welfare implications of NAFTA, the connections between international trade and CO₂ emissions, the role of trade in propagating international business cycles, and the effect of trade frictions in segmenting international capital markets. Other work of theirs has examined the contribution of innovation and the diffusion of technology to economic growth across countries of the world. Eaton is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In April 2018 Eaton and Kortum were awarded in Onassis Prize in International Trade.