Hi. I am an assistant professor ingraduate student in Willamette University's department of Economics. More importantly, I'm married and have two children. Follow the links to find out more:

Family Teaching Research Vita Contact Info



Family

On to the important stuff...

I was born and raised in Berea, Kentucky. My parents--now proud grandparents and newly retired--were both teachers at Berea College. My older sister, Kristin, is a graduate student at the University of Chicago divinity school. (She is in charge of our sons' spiritual guidance.) My older brother, Anthony, is a truck driver who is based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Heidi and I met at Stanford and got married in the Santa Cruz mountains almost five years ago. Heidi is a works for the family busines, a commercial real estate development company based in Portland. In August of 2000 she gave birth to our son Aidan Alexander who immediately became the light of our lives. Shortly over a year later, we all moved to our home in Wilsonville, OR and immediately set Aidan to work cleaning the place up. All of lives changed again when Heidi gave birth to Maxwell Scott, in early February, 2003.

To see more pictures of the family click here.

Teaching

While I find my research stimulating and engaging, my first love is teaching. I made teaching a focus of my graduate career, and was fortunate to have the opportunity to work as a consultant with Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning. My teaching philosophy is described below:
Upon completing my degree (actually slightly in advance of completing my degree), I was happy to land a job here at Willamette where my primary focus will be on teaching. In my first year here, I have taught Principles of Microeconomics,Econometrics, and Environmental economics. In addition, I have developed a simple Excel models that can be used to explore the limited the meaning of allocative efficieny, which can be accessed here:


Research

Some environmental problems (e. g., global warming, ozone depletion, ocean pollution) are international in scope, and thus an international effort is required to deal with them effectively. Because there is no international government, participation in such an effort must be voluntary. My work explores the economic forces that help determine the nature of international environmental agreements (IEAs). In particular, I analyze the role of international trade in determining the composition and effectiveness of an IEA. An abstract of my dissertation (completed August, 2000) is included below:

My dissertation work was supervised by James Sweeney. I am also working closely with John Weyant and Meiring de Villiers.



How to Contact Me