Warnock is an expert on international capital flows, international portfolio allocation and financial sector development. His work has been featured in the Financial Times, The Economist, Barron's, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and his publications have appeared in a number of journals, including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Housing Economics and Financial Analysts Journal.

Before coming to Darden in 2004, Warnock was a senior economist in the international finance division at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System while also teaching at Georgetown University. Warnock's international experience includes, among other things, two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi's Thyolo District. His professional career started on Wall Street, where he was a commodity trading adviser.

Warnock is Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Board's International Finance Division, and Associate Editor at the Journal of International Economics. He has consulted often at the European Central Bank and the Bank for International Settlements Representative Office for Asia and the Pacific. In the recent past, he has been a research fellow at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and Council for Foreign Relations; co-led a multi-team Inter-American Development Bank project on housing finance systems in Latin America; and been a consultant to the IMF and to the World Bank on its GEMLOC emerging bond markets project.