Job
Market Candidates - Fall 2008/Spring 2009
If you have any questions concerning our students or need further
assistance in contacting prospective candidates, please do not
hesitate to call Richard Wagner, Director of the
PhD program, at (703) 993-1132.
Michael Clark
Dissertation Title: The Economic Origins and Consequences of Democracy in America, 1790-1860
Dissertation Abstract: Democracy emerged in the early nineteenth century United States on a very broad scale
for essentially the first time in history. This happened despite the fact that most states had strict
property-based voting restrictions following the American Revolution. Why did those in power
give up some of this power by extending voting rights? What were the fiscal consequences of
democratization? My dissertation presents some answers to these and related questions for the
United States during the time period 1790-1860. I take a public choice approach to economic
history to analyze the period. The first chapter presents a conceptual framework for
understanding the period in terms of contractarian bargains for providing various public goods
(e.g. militia service). The second chapter examines state-level suffrage changes in historical
detail, with emphasis on evidence that provision of public goods was the impetus for expanding
voting rights. A newly constructed data set of state militia enrollment rates is also presented in
the second chapter, and I use this data as a proxy for the external threat to a state. The third
chapter examines data on voting, taxation, and public expenditures for each state where voting
rights were extended during this period. I primarily use the Sylla, Legler, and Wallis (1993) data
on state finances to construct a panel for examining the effect of changing the size and
composition of the electorate on taxation and expenditures.
Fields: Public Choice, Public Finance
Advisor: Dr. Richard E. Wagner rwagner@gmu.edu
Job Paper: Political Exchange and Voting Rights: The Demand for Public Goods in the Early American Republic, 1790-1860
Links: CV Teaching EvaluationECON310 Teaching EvaluationECON410 Homepage
Email: jhorpeda@gmu.edu
Dissertation Title: Essays on Banking and Capital
Dissertation Abstract: What are the causes on bank runs? Can it be established when it is due to a bank's fundamentals or depositors' herding behavior? I develop an agent-based computational model to test the extant competing theories to explain bank runs. Namely, the "fundamental" versus the "panic" view type of explanations. I draw on Diamond and Dybvig (1983) to model a one-bank serving many discrete depositors to study their learning. These depositors are embedded in social networks. I modify the deposit contract and its impact on the frequency of bank runs. I increase the complexity of the model by adding multiple banks. Banks can have different sizes and each one can be isolated or interact with others in an inter-bank market. I also add a central bank with money issuing capabilities that can enforce a reserve requirement and lend to the banks. In my model, an institutional setup such as an inter-bank market reduces the frequency of bank runs. But a central bank increases it.
Fields: Monetary Theory, Economic Networks, Constitutional Economics, Agent-based Computational Models
Advisor: Dr. Richard E. Wagner rwagner@gmu.edu Dr. Carlos Ramirez cramire2@gmu.edu Dr. Robert Axtell rax222@gmu.edu
Job Paper: Bank Runs and Monetary Arrangements: A Computational Examination
Links: CV ECON 311 Teaching Evaluation
Email: promero@gmu.edu
Dissertation Title: The Political Economy of Urban Reconstruction, Development, and Planning
Dissertation Abstract: Mixed-income housing attempts to correct the effects of concentrated poverty with government planning of neighborhood human capital investment. Government coordination of human capital investment allegedly produces beneficial outcomes by role model effects between individuals of various incomes. This paper shows that mixed-income developments are not only incapable of producing the positive neighborhood outcomes that are the objectives of these plans, but that the actual process by which outcomes emerge is through one of exchange rather than planning and implementation. I show that informational requirements and pervasive knowledge problems severely limit local government's ability to use mixed income development schemes as a neighborhood coordination device. This analysis presents an exchange framework for examining the social processes underlying emergent neighborhood outcomes. A case study of the River Gardens development provides strong support for the exchange paradigm outlined in the paper.
Fields: Applied Microeconomics, Political Economy, Urban Development, Public Policy
Advisor: Dr. Peter Boettke pboettke@gmu.edu
Job Paper: Mixed Income Development Housing: What's Left in Neighborhood Economic Planning
Links: CV, Homepage
Email: eschaeff@gmu.edu
Dissertation Title: Institutions Matter: An Extension of the Theory of Deregulation
Dissertation Abstract: The study of deregulation since Sam Peltzman's (1989) call for an analysis of the institutional underpinnings of regulation has focused either on analyzing the competitive nature of industries (see Kroszner and Strahan (1999)), or on the study of shifts in political coalitions (see Kroszner and Stratmann (1998) or Acemoglu and Robinson (2000)). I want to suggest that both of these are focusing on the symptoms of regulation rather than the causes of its persistence. Instead of focusing on the symptoms I want to get to the heart of what causes these shifts in coalitions or the degree of competition within an industry. Regulation is a fundamental interference into the market mechanism. Its ultimate attempt is always to manipulate the natural distribution of wealth within a society. I argue that the success or failure of this attempt is ultimately determined by the design of the regulatory institutions and by the technological innovation in the industry or the development of substitutes.
Fields: Public Choice, Development Economics, Law and Economics, Austrian Economics
Advisor: Dr. Peter T. Leeson pleeson@gmu.edu
Job Paper: Deregulation Despite Transitional Gains -- This paper investigates what factors can lead to deregulation, even when transitional losses to economic or political losers are present. I use the historical example of the brewers' guild of Cologne to show that it is not political or economic rents as suggested by Acemoglu and Robinson (2000) per se that are important for reform, but instead alternative profit opportunities that are available to agents. Regulation in the historical example persisted due to the structural characteristics of the brewing industry in Cologne and was eventually overcome because innovation had changed the opportunities of the producers.
Links: CV, Homepage Teaching Evaluation ECON 306, Teaching Evaluation ECON 104
Email: dweinert@gmu.edu , dweinert@gmail.com
Dissertation Title: An Economic Analysis of Political Beliefs in Tort and Criminal Law
Dissertation Abstract: To better understand jury decision-making, this dissertation examines the extent to which jurors' political beliefs impact real world trial outcomes. Jurors have little economic incentive to administer justice exactly as prescribed by legal theory, providing reason to suspect that jurors' personal characteristics and beliefs influence their decision-making beyond simply the facts of the case. In Chapter One I survey the relevant economic literature, making the case that jurors behave as if they are rationally political. In Chapters Two and Three I use relatively large panels of data to determine the extent to which jury pools' political beliefs affect average tort awards, criminal sentences, and criminal conviction rates. I find robust empirical evidence that individuals' political beliefs influence real world tort and criminal law outcomes.
Fields: Law and Economics, Public Choice
Advisor: Dr. Alexander Tabarrok atabarro@gmu.edu
Job Paper: Political Beliefs and Tort Awards: Making the Case for a Rationally Political Juror
Links: CV Homepage ECON 385 Teaching Evaluation
Email: swentlan@gmu.edu
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