2. Scholarly Achievement
Similar to most junior faculty, upon earning my Ph.D, my major scholarly goals were to translate my dissertation into articles to be published in academic journals and to develop a new research agenda. In summary, I have published two academic journal articles, have several currently actively under review or near submission-stage, and by December 2019, will have given four conference presentations. I have presented original academic research at one or more conferences each calendar year in my time here at Hood, and intend each presentation to lead to a publication in an academic journal. Looking forward, I have developed a robust research agenda with some coauthors that I forsee leading to at least a half dozen future journal articles in the next few years.
My research agenda has developed into two broad strands. First, I explore the economic history and political economy of innovation and creativity. My first academic publication, “The Perils of Copyright Regulation” (2016) in the Review of Austrian Economics, traces how the 1976 Copyright Act, the first major revision to U.S. copyright law, has had significant unintended consequences that raise the transaction costs of producing creative works. My second academic publication, “Institutional Entrepreneurship, Wikipedia, and the Opportunity of the Commons,” (2016) in the Journal of Institutional Economics, looks at how Wikipedia is able to facilitate anonymous users to contribute high quality articles for free in an open source context with the right set of rules and governance. In a working paper, “Pirate Thy Neighbor: International Copyright Protectionism in the United States, 1790-2000,” I explore the interest group dynamics of publishing to explain why the United States did not respect international copyright until the late 20th Century. I am still revising this paper to be sent to an academic journal. Finally, in another paper under review at the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, “‘Public Goods’ or ‘Good for the Public’ How Political Entrepreneurship Endogenized the Public Funding of Science,” I explore the nature of public goods in economics with a case study of how scientific research has become considered a public good (in the economic sense) and is funded by governments.
I also have three projects that I am still revising before I submit them to journals: for one, which I recieved a Board of Associates McCardle grant over the summer of 2017, called “Kickstart My Art: Is Crowdfunding a Substitute or a Complement to Intellectual Property Laws?” explores the institutional differences between patronage, intellectual property, and crowdfunding in how they incentivize creativity and innovation. Second, “Distributing Patronage: Intellectual Property in the Transition from Natural State to Open Access Order,” explores the political-economic history and dynamics that lead to the world’s first copyright law in 18th century England. Finally, I explore the promise and pitfalls of protecting intellectual property with blockchain technology in another project, entitled “Crypto-Copyright: The Potential of Protecting Intellectual Property with the Blockchain,” for which I received another McCardle grant in 2018. At present, this first strand of research is a solo effort, inspired in part by some of the ideas I explored in my (2015) dissertation, Essays on the Institutional Analysis of Copyright and its Alternatives.
Second, I attempt to model innovation and its affects on economic growth using computational social science methods. This work is primarily a joint effort between my colleague Santiago Gangotena at Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador and myself. In “Learning by Doing: Who’s Learning? Who’s Doing? and Other Production Function Myths,” co-authored with Santiago Gangotena, which is currently under review at the Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, we explore the problems of modeling technological improvements and the idea of “increasing returns” with production functions. In “A Tale of Two Capitals: Modelling the Interaction Between Ideas, Capital, and Growth,” which I am presenting at the Southern Economic Association Conference this November, Santiago and I provide a theoretical framework for understanding several puzzles in economic and technological history - such as “inventions before their time” and simultaneous invention - by using a network model to link physical capital and innovative ideas (what we call “ethereal capital”). Finally, with Santiago Gangotena, Pedro Romero, and Alex Xerves, in our work in progress “Networks and Growth,” we create a computational network model to explain economic growth in world history according to the structure of networks (which is how we operationalize economic and political institutions) and ideas. Each of these papers we intend to submit to academic journals, and the latter to a first-tier economics journal.
In addition to my two major research agendas, I intend to let my teaching experiences inform my research. Over the 2019 Summer, I received an Academic Innovation grant (see above) to develop resources for teaching R in my econometrics course. After the semester is over, I intend to write up my experiences and insights from teaching econometrics and causal inference with R into a pedogogical journal article.
Finally, in our department, several activities constitute scholarship, including technical reports and consulting work. Over the Winter and Spring of 2018, I was a member of the Mayor of Frederick’s Strategic Opportunities Advisory Team, where I worked with a group led by Ted Gregory on identifying opportunities and threats to economic resiliency for the City of Frederick. This resulted in us delivering a Report to the Mayor of Frederick in June 2018. Hood College’s Graduate School blogged about my work with this group.
Please see the Evidence of Scholarship section of my dossier for additional documentation.