Key: (u) – Undergraduate, (g) – Graduate, (f2f) – In-person (face-to-face), (async) – Online asynchronous
Computational Economics and Simulation – (u) (g) (f2f)
Course Description: How does information spread in social media, and what happens when we try to control it? How does a cluster of large banks in a stable economy suddenly fail, almost overnight? How can error-prone and cognitively constrained people still manage to coordinate with each other in large and complicated societies? This course teaches students how to understand and simulate economic and social systems with many agents. Many-agent systems tend to have complex dynamical behaviors like emergent orders and sudden transitions that cannot be modeled using traditional analytical and statistical methods. The course covers tools to model complex dynamical behaviors like agent-based modeling and social network analysis, which reaching widespread use in the public and private sector. Topics include opinion dynamics, voting dynamics, information spread in social networks, tipping points, zero-intelligence prices, Schelling segregation, spatial competition, bounded rationality, supply chain dynamics, financial herding, the tragedy of the commons, inequality, evolutionary game theory, and the division of knowledge and expertise. Students will be taught how to build simulations in the open-source agent-based modeling platform NetLogo.
Taught: Spring 2024 (Wichita State University)
Economies in Transition – (u) (g) (f2f)
Course Description: Course discusses the socialist experiments in the Soviet Union, India, and China from a socioeconomic perspective, and how they’ve transitioned into market- or marketlike economies, and the issues each economy currently faces moving forward. We discuss the tradeoffs during the socialist experiments in terms of lives and rights, and the sociological as well as market impact of these tradeoffs both when they occurred and today.
Taught: Fall 2017 (George Mason University), Fall 2020 (Wichita State University)
Foundations of Business (u) (async)
Course Description: Foundations of Business is intended to provide students interested in business, economics and finance with an foundational understanding of the business world and how it works. The overall goals of this course are to develop an appreciation for key foundational business concepts, gain familiarity with the major business disciplines, and form a professional development plan.
Taught: Fall 2020-23 (Wichita State University)
Game Theory and Institutions (u) (g) (f2f)
Course Description: Can we plan for the future and act in the present without rules of private property? How do social norms guide action and strategic decision-making? Rules and strategies of behavior are the means by which agents reach their ends, but agents do not act in a vacuum. Agents follow rules and engage in strategic behavior on a social landscape, where they operate within particular social configurations and are both subject to and benefit from institutions that guide and restrict behavior. In this course, we contextualize and broaden agent behavior by understanding how strategic behavior and social landscapes affect trade and coordination.
Taught: Fall 2017 (George Mason University), Spring 2021-23 (Wichita State University)
Intermediate Microeconomics – (u) (f2f)
Course Description: Neoclassical economics, still widely used by the economics profession, is a set of tools that relies on a certain mathematical and social conception of rationality to cohere. We thoroughly cover the tools and logic of neoclassical economics, so that after the class is over you should be able to read and understand articles utilizing those concepts. We shall also intentionally deviate from the neoclassical path to consider concepts like bounded rationality, entrepreneurial discovery, and radical uncertainty. Ultimately, as we shall learn, rationality is not a feature of individuals, but of the economic system.
Taught: Summer 2018 (George Mason University)
International Economic Policy – (u) (f2f)
Course Description: Does one country really gain from trading with other countries around the world? This simple question has been at the center of controversy for centuries. This principles course is intended to help students contextualize what trade means on the global scale. Given what we will come to understand about international trade, we can then ask what kind of international economic policies are in the best interest of countries, which they actually employ, and which have failed and succeeded. Finally, we will complete the course with an overview and discussion of particular current issues in international economic policy.
Taught: Spring 2018 (George Mason University)
Principles of Microeconomics (u) (f2f) (async)
Course Description: This economics principles course takes students through the basic concepts of microeconomics, applications and methods. Topics covered include the economic way of thinking, comparative advantage, supply and demand, the effects of taxes and subsidies, the price system, price ceilings and floors, utility maximization, profit maximization and competition, the invisible hand of the market, understanding economic data, monopolies, price discrimination, game theory and strategic decision-making, advertising, public goods, social welfare, externalities, political economy and public choice, and the planner’s problem.
Taught: Fall 2020-23 (async), Spring 2021-24 (f2f) (Wichita State University)