About Me

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Clark University. I earned my PhD from the University of Michigan in 2022.

Research

My research is in economic development, health economics, and economic history. I study 2 main questions:

1. What policies have successfully broken intergenerational cycles of poverty and poor health in developing countries, both past and present?
2. What are the historical and cultural factors that created such disparities in the first place?

I collect novel historical and geographical data that I use for causal identification in large administrative datasets to test hypotheses generated by economic theory as well as anthropologists, historians, public health scholars, and sociologists.

Teaching

I teach economic development at the graduate and undergraduate levels as well as principles courses. In teaching evaluations:

• Graduate students rated my course's contributions to increasing their capacity to think critically and formulate questions as 5/5 (0.63 SD above the university mean for grad classes).
• Undergraduates rated my instructor effectiveness as 4.92/5 (0.55 SD above the university mean for undergrad classes), and a student described me as "one of the best professors [they] have had in the major."

LGBTQ+ Inclusion

As an openly gay economist, I work to increase inclusion in the profession as a mentor in the CSQIEP LGBTQ+ Mentorship Program. I did the same in college sports as an out NCAA Division I student-athlete on the University of Arizona Men's Swimming Team.