Behavioral & Experimental Economics
Assistant Professor of Economics
Department of Business Administration & Economics · Saint Mary's College
I study how people actually make economic decisions — not the frictionless optimizers of the textbook, but real people navigating uncertainty, habit, and social context. My work uses controlled experiments to test where standard models hold, where they break, and what that means for policy and everyday choice.
I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at Saint Mary's College, where I teach microeconomic theory and lead courses in behavioral and environmental economics. I came to Saint Mary's by way of my own undergraduate education here — an unusual and, for me, meaningful return.
My research sits at the intersection of behavioral and experimental economics. I design laboratory and field experiments to examine how individuals form preferences, respond to incentives, and depart from the predictions of standard rational-choice models. The questions I find most compelling are the ones where small changes in framing, defaults, or social information produce disproportionately large changes in behavior.
In the classroom, I bring that same experimental orientation. Students run markets, play games, and generate their own data before they see the theory that is supposed to describe it — an approach that consistently makes abstract models feel earned rather than asserted.
Experimental approaches to decision-making under uncertainty, social influence, and incentive design.
Courses recently taught at Saint Mary's College.
A complete record of education, appointments, publications, presentations, and service.