Title: Associate Professor of Economics
Hometown: Madison, Wisconsin
Educational background: BS from Bowling Green State University, PhD University of Minnesota.
Professional background: I have held positions at the University of Texas at Austin, the New York University Stern School of Business and Penn State University.
How did you get into your field of research?
Broadly speaking, I study international topics: trade, multinational firms and sovereign debt. As I was growing up, NAFTA was formed, China joined the World Trade Organization and the Euro was created. I wanted to understand how these major controversial events affected society.
What attracted you to UW-Madison?
The economics department is very good. I am very excited to be a part this group.
What was your first visit to campus like?
My first recruitment visit was in the winter — it was very cold. From my hotel window, I could see the Frozen Assets Festival happening on the very frozen Lake Mendota. People were having a lot of fun out there.
What’s one thing you hope students who take a class with you will come away with?
That economics is a way of thinking about a very broad class of questions.
Do you feel your work relates in any way to the Wisconsin Idea? If so, please describe how.
I sure hope so! Much of my research is on the effects of economic policy. How does NAFTA affect the dairy industry? Will the new tax policy encourage multinational firms to bring profits back to the United States for domestic investment? Better economic policy is something that reaches “every family of the state.”
What’s something interesting about your area of expertise you can share that will make us sound smarter at parties?
A lot of ink has been spilled about the U.S. trade deficit — the value of U.S. imports is greater than the value of its exports. This is true for trade in goods, but the opposite is true for services. The United States runs a trade surplus in services. We export more consulting, engineering, banking, insurance and entertainment services than we import from the rest of the world.
Hobbies/other interests:
Hiking, fly fishing, building and programming bits of electronics, beer making, riding bikes.