About Me

I'm a professor of economics at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy in the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University.

I received a BA in international affairs and economics from The George Washington University in 2006 and an MS and PhD in computational sciences from George Mason University in 2010.

Research

My current research uses experiments to explore the underpinnings of prosociality, cooperation and conflict resolution and to identify the origins of economic institutions such as property rights. I have also worked on finding ways to increase the supply of transplantable organs, measuring the spitefulness of individuals, understanding the sources of asset price bubbles, evaluating individual theory of mind, and capturing the discovery process underlying specialization and trade, among other topics.

You can find links to my papers here and a copy of my CV here. My work is also available on SSRN and RePEc, and you can check out my Google Scholar citations.

Teaching

Part of the mission of the Smith Institute faculty is to develop provocative, interdisciplinary seminar-style courses in the emerging Humanomics program at Chapman. In Fall 2022, I taught a Freshman Foundations Course called Moonshots and Epic Fails with Keith Hankins, and in Interterm 2023, I taught a course called What is Progress? with Brennan McDavid.

In the past, I've taught courses on experimental methods in economics for undergraduate and graduate students as well as principles and intermediate micro. You can find out more about my courses here, with new material being added as soon as I develop it.