In Milner's 1988 book Resisting Protectionism, she seeks to explain why U.S. trade policy in the 1920s was more protectionist than in the 1970s, despite many similar underlying conditions.[3] She argues that greater economic interdependence in the latter period created a coalition of actors who stood to gain from trade and thus lobbied against protectionism.[3] The social science research design book Designing Social Inquiry by King, Keohane and Verba characterizes her study as a successful way that qualitative scholars can overcome omitted variable bias.[4]
Since 1986 she was a professor at Columbia University and was between 2001 and 2004 James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations at Columbia University. She moved to Princeton University in 2005, where she served as chair of the Politics department until 2011.[5]
In 2021-2022, she served as president of the International Studies Association.[6]
For the moment, she is conducting research on issues related to globalization and development, such as the political economy of foreign aid, the digital divide and the global diffusion of the internet, and the relationship between globalization and environmental policy.
Milner, Helen V.; Baldwin, David, eds. (1990). The political economy of national security: an annotated bibliography. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN9780813379081.
Milner, Helen V.; Baldwin, David, eds. (2014) [1990]. East-west trade and the atlantic alliance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN9781349210510.
Milner, Helen V., ed. (1993). The Library of International Political Economy (Series). London: Edward Elgar. General editor of multi-volume series.
Milner, Helen V.; Keohane, Robert, eds. (1996). Internationalization and domestic politics. Cambridge England New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press. ISBN9780521565875.
Milner, Helen V. (1997). Interests, institutions, and information: domestic politics and international relations. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN9780691011769.
Milner, Helen V.; Moravcsik, Andrew (2009). Power, interdependence, and nonstate actors in world politics. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN9780691140285.
Milner, Helen V.; Mansfield, Edward D. (2012). Votes, vetoes, and the political economy of international trade agreements. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN9781280494222.
Milner, Helen V.; Tingley, Dustin (2016). Sailing the Water's Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN9780691165479.
^Milner, Helen V. (1986). Resisting the protectionist temptation: industry politics and trade policy in France and the United States in the 1920s and 1970s (Ph.D thesis). Harvard University. OCLC25994297.