He studied Chinese and Economics at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and received his Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Dr. Tochkov’s research focuses on regional growth and convergence, fiscal decentralization, trade and regional integration. He is particularly interested in the economies of China and Russia. In 2014, Dr. Tochkov was a Yegor Gaidar Fellow of the U.S. Russia Foundation for Economic Advancement and the Rule of Law (USRF) and a Visiting Scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Khabarovsk, where he studied the trade between China and Russia’s Far East.