December, 2011
Welcome to my home page!
I received my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh in May 2002, where I was the recipient of the Andrew W. Mellon Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship and the Reuben E. Slesinger Research Award. I accepted a tenure-track position at the Department of Economics of the University of Alberta in January 2002. I was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor of Economics in July 2008, and nominated for the Excellence in Research Award in December 2011. I also served as a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law, as a Visiting Scholar of Law and Economics at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and as both a Visiting Associate Professor of Economics and a Visiting Scholar of Behavioral Law and Economics at Carnegie Mellon University John H. Heinz School. I was awarded a three-year National Science Foundation Research Grant (with Kathryn Spier; $205,000) for my work on contracts in December 2011. I am currently visiting Yale Law School as a Senior Research Scholar in Law.
My research falls into two main categories: Law and Economics and Industrial Organization. First, my work has contributed to better understanding how exclusive dealing contracts might be used by incumbent monopolists to exclude potential entrants, and which factors might enhance the exclusionary power of these types of contracts. Second, I have studied the efficiency of bargaining institutions in legal settings including partnership dissolution mechanisms and pre-trial bargaining mechanisms. Third, I have analyzed how various legal rules influence potential defendants (firms) to invest in product safety, plaintiffs to file lawsuits, and litigants' decision to settle or go to court; and whether these legal rules generate socially desirable outcomes. Finally, I have written on topics related to labor and financial institutions including the strategic use of replacement workers in collective bargaining negotiations, and the role of financial intermediation in highly-dollarized economies.
My work has been discussed in many surveys of Law and Economics and Experimental Law and Economics. For example, my work is outlined in Spier, Litigation, and in Talley and Camerer, Experimental Law and Economics, in Polinsky and Shavell, ed., The Handbook of Law and Economics, 2007. My papers are discussed in Daughety and Reinganum, Settlement, in Sanchirico, ed., The Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, 2009. My work also appears in Jolls, Law and Economics, in NBER Reporter, 2008, and in Croson, Experimental Law and Economics, in Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences, 2009.
My most recent work is on partnership dissolution mechanisms (with Kathy Spier, Harvard and NBER, and Richard Brooks, Yale; RAND Journal of Economics, 2010). This research has been funded by the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School, and by the Killam Research Fund at the University of Alberta. We presented the results from this work at the University of San Diego (American Law and Economics Association Meetings, May 2009) and at the University of Southern California (Conference on Empirical Legal Studies). I have also been working on exclusive dealing and antitrust (with Kathy Spier; American Economic Review, December 2009). This research has been funded by Harvard University, Carnegie Mellon University and Northwestern University. I presented these results at Cornell University (Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, September 2008), at the NBER Summer Institute in Law and Economics (July, 2008), at Columbia University (American Law and Economics Association Meetings, May 2008), at Carnegie Mellon University (Econometric Society Meetings, June 2008), at the University of British Columbia (Invited Session, Canadian Economic Association Meetings, June 2008), at Harvard University (Seminar in Law, Economics, and Organization, November, 2007), and at Georgetown University (Workshop in Law and Economics, November, 2007). Finally, I have been working on cognitive coherence and tort reform (Journal of Economic Psychology, December 2009). This research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation (Roundtable on Behavioral Economics) and the University of Alberta. I presented the results from this study at New York University (Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, November, 2007).
I am currently working on exclusive dealing contracts with stipulated damages,
corporate takeovers, and moral hazard in
teams with Kathy Spier
(Harvard and NBER). I am also working on debiasing through law mechanisms with Christine Jolls
(Yale and NBER), and on incentive schemes in lab and field organizations with
Ian Ayres (Yale and NBER). Finally, I am writing two chapters (contracts and
markets, and litigation and
tort reform) for The Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics
(Zeiler and Teintelbaum, eds.), and a chapter (liability and litigation) for
The
My teaching expertise is in the areas of microeconomic theory, game theory and economic applications, business strategy, applied economic analysis to public policy (undergraduate and graduate levels), and corporate law.