2012 Summer Institute Students

Maximilliano Appendino was born in Gálvez, province of Santa Fe, Argentina. He completed a BA and an MA in economics at the Universidad de San Andrés at Victoria, province of Buenos Aires. After graduation, he remained in San Andrés working as a teaching and research assistant. Three years later, Maximilliano went to Yale University to do a Ph.D. in economics. He has been there for almost four years; his dissertation is on household finance. He has always been interested in the history of economic thought but has never had the opportunity to study it systematically.

James Bailey is from Maine and went to college at the University of Tulsa, where Professor Bobbie Horn introduced him to the history of economic thought. He is currently at Temple University writing a dissertation on health economics and applied econometrics, focusing on the effects of health insurance benefit mandates. He hopes that this Summer Institute, together with last year’s, will prepare him to teach a history of thought course for the first time at Temple next spring.

Originally from Montréal, Canada, Mathieu Bédard is a PhD and teaching fellow at Aix-Marseille Université. He received a BA in applied economics and a research MA in institutions, law, and economics from Université Paul Cézanne. His dissertation is on banking and systemic risk. Very early, the history of economic thought is what made him want to get a PhD, and he'd like the Summer Institute to become a stepping stone toward a dissertation chapter on the history of economic thought regarding his dissertation topic.

Simon Bilo was born in Slovakia and received his master’s degree in economic policy from the University of Economics in Prague. He is a fourth-year PhD student in the Department of Economics at George Mason University and is also a visiting research student at New York University, where he is working on his dissertation. The underlying theme of the dissertation is the idea of monetary nonneutrality, also known as the Cantillon effect after the eighteenth-century Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Besides monetary economics and history of economic thought, he is also passionate about Austrian economics.

Jason Brent has just completed the second year of his PhD in economics at UNC Chapel Hill, with a research focus on labor economics and education. Prior to graduate school, Jason worked as both a screenwriter and speechwriter in Toronto, Canada. He attended the 2011 Summer Institute in Denver and, with the support of a HOPE fellowship, will be teaching a course on the history of thought in economics at UNC in 2012–13. 

Samuel Brown was born and raised in the northeastern United States, and he is currently a PhD Candidate in economics at Brown University. His research interests are economic development, microeconomic theory, political economy, and the philosophy of science. He received a BS in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2006, and an MS in agricultural economics from Purdue University in 2010. He is looking forward to discussing economics’ contested status as a science at the Institute. He also plans to enjoy some live music during his stay in North Carolina, and if that interests anyone else they should let him know.

Kevin Bryan is a PhD student in MEDS at Northwestern University studying micro theory and models of invention. He did his undergraduate degree in his hometown at Boston University, then worked briefly for the Department of Commerce in Beijing and the Federal Reserve in Richmond. He sees very little difference between studies of methodology, history of thought, and pure theory: all are methods of understanding what questions are economically interesting and how we might go about modeling them.

Andrew Dickens was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He did his undergraduate degree at the University of Manitoba, and then completed his master’s degree at the University of Toronto last year. Currently he is at York University in Toronto and just finished the first year of his PhD program. His research interests include long-run growth and the role of institutions in economic development. His hope for the Summer Institute is to learn more about methodology and the development of ideas. He finds the study of economic ideas to be very interesting and hopes to share what he learns with future students and colleagues.

Sherry Forbes is from Virginia. Her undergraduate degree is from Sweet Briar College. She is now at the University of Virginia, where she is writing a dissertation in macro/international economics. 

Jesse Gastelle has just finished his third year of the PhD program in economics at George Mason University. He lives in Northern Virginia now, but is originally from Colorado, where he got his undergraduate degree. At GMU he fielded in Austrian and development economics, but his interests also include HET, new institutional, and public choice/constitutional economics. His dissertation is on the Keynesian revolution, so he’s looking forward to learning about the competition between schools of thought that led up to modern macro.

Alexander Gill was born in New Orleans, grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, and went to Tulane for undergrad.  After college, he worked in investment banking for four years before returning to school (North Carolina State University) in 2009 to pursue a doctorate.  His dissertation (in progress) is on institutionalized moral hazard in the securitization process and its implications for business cycles.  In his attempt to articulate what he hopes to learn at the Institute, he is reminded of a quote from gangster Cle Sloan in the documentary Bastards of the Party:  “I’ve been digging and digging, trying to get to the core. How did this come about?”

Once an aspiring actor, Simon Halliday left it all behind to complete his undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics and English literature at the University of Cape Town, where he also taught undergraduate economics. Currently in the final year of his PhD in economics at the University of Siena, he recently began to lecture at Royal Holloway, University of London. Planning to teach and research the history of economic thought, Simon is attending the Summer Institute because he wants to clarify his knowledge of the methodology of economics and to improve his understanding of the movement from pluralism to monism in twentieth century economic thought. 

Catherine Herfeld is a research fellow at Duke’s Center for the History of Political Economy. She is about to complete her dissertation (Witten/Herdecke University), tracing the origins and philosophical foundations of rational choice theory. Her research interests include the philosophy of economics, the emergence of mathematical economics, the phenomenon of economics imperialism, and the work of Amartya Sen. She looks forward to broadening her knowledge of the recent history of economics. Catherine holds a diploma in economics (TU Berlin) and an MSc in philosophy of the social sciences (LSE). She has been a pre-doc fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) and a visiting scholar at the philosophy department of Columbia University (New York).

Garrick Hileman is a second-year PhD student in LSE’s Department of Economic History. His thesis is titled “Post-World War II British Debt Sustainability and the Origins of Modern Financial Repression,” and his advisers are Professors Albrecht Ritschl and Niall Ferguson. Garrick’s private-sector experience includes investment banking, strategy consulting, private equity, and start-ups. Garrick holds an MBA from IMD and a BA in accounting and international political economy from the University of Washington, where he was elected student body president.

Dan Hirschman grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan. After a short detour to California, he returned to the U of M to pursue a PhD in sociology. His dissertation focuses on the history of "the economy" as an object of knowledge in the twentieth century. He argues that the emergence of routine, timely, official national income statistics gave shape to "the economy" and made possible modern macroeconomics. Macroeconomics, in turn, reshaped national income statistics. He has also studied the politics of financial regulation and the role of numbers in affirmative action.

Matthew Klepacz grew up in northeastern Ohio, outside of Cleveland. He got his undergraduate education at the University of Pittsburgh and also earned a master’s degree in statistics while there. He has just finished the first year of a PhD at Boston University. His interests are in macroeconomics, econometrics, and economic history. He hopes to learn more about the ideas of the great economic thinkers of the past century because he thinks there are many ideas they had that are still worth exploring.

Konstantin Kucheryavyy is originally from Kazakhstan, but he moved to Novosibirsk (the center of Western Siberia in Russia) when he was sixteen. He received his undergraduate and MS degrees in software engineering from Novosibirsk State University. After working as a programmer for several years, he decided to turn to economics. He moved to Moscow and graduated from the New Economic School with an MA in economics. His comparative advantage in research is turning economics into mathematics and programming. He hopes after the Institute he will better understand why he has been doing this.

Joe Lesica, originally from Croatia, has just finished the second year of the PhD program in economics at McMaster University. He earned his undergraduate degree from Baruch College in New York and a master’s degree from Queen's University, both in economics. He is specializing in the fields of public economics and political economics. His research interests are concentrated on the positive theories of taxation and understanding the effects that political forces and institutions have on shaping fiscal policies and outcomes. During the Summer Institute at Duke, he is looking to deepen his understanding of the history of economic methodology and the role that economic and political ideas had and still have in influencing heterogeneous economic policies.

As an undergraduate, James Morrison studied history at the University of Chicago and Cambridge University. He received a PhD in political science and an MA in history from Stanford University in 2008. Currently, he lives in Vermont with his wife and two daughters and is an assistant professor of political science at Middlebury College. He is particularly interested in international political economy and the history of political and economic ideas. His current research analyzes the influence of three seminal theorists—John Locke, Adam Smith, and John Maynard Keynes—on pivotal shifts in Britain's foreign economic policy. In addition to his scholarly pursuits, his wife and he spend a great deal of time renovating their rather old (1842!) farmhouse.

Nate Pattison graduated from Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, in 2011 and is now finishing his first year at the University of Virginia.  Academically, he is still narrowing his interests but is fairly certain they will be on the micro side.  While at Duke, he hopes to better understand the methods and justification for the methods that are used in economics. He is also interested in how the approach to economic problems has changed during the last century. Outside of economics, Nate enjoys reading, playing sports, and the outdoors.

Irina Pritchett was born in Belarus, but spent her childhood on a reptile farm in Alabama. She left the world of herpetology for economics and earned her undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD at North Carolina State University with an emphasis on labor economics. She looks forward to attending the Institute and adding substance to her knowledge of economists she currently recognizes through the laws, theorems, and methods that bear their names. Besides economics, she enjoys yoga, karate, literature, and creative writing.

Originally, Ken Reddix is from Mesa, Arizona, but he has spent the most recent portion of his life in Houston. He received his BS in mathematics and computer science from Stephen F. Austin State University. His research interests are focused on empirical industrial organization and applied microeconometrics. His intellectual goal at the Institute is to develop a solid working knowledge of economic thought and its transition over the last century. His personal goal is to form new friendships across disciplines, across programs, and possibly begin collaborative projects. Overall he is excited about these two weeks and looks forward to meeting other economists and sharing thoughts and gaining new perspectives.

Tomas Rotta was born and raised in Brazil and got both his undergraduate degree in management and his master’s in economics from the University of São Paulo. He is now a student in the economics PhD program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His primary research field is political economy, and he always tries to combine insights from the history of economic thought. His personal objective in the Summer Institute is to gather more ideas on the origins and developments of different economics paradigms. 

Scott Scheall is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Arizona State University; he is also a faculty member in the science, technology, and society department. He’s nearing completion of a dissertation on epistemological issues in the Hayek-Keynes debate. His research interests revolve around economic methodology, particularly with respect to the business cycle. He’s looking forward to the Institute as an opportunity to meet people with similar interests, and also the chance to learn more about business cycle theory, macroeconomics, and Hayek and Keynes.  

John Seliski is in the third year of the PhD program in economics at the University of Minnesota, specializing in macroeconomics and international trade. After receiving a BS in economics from the University of Minnesota in 2007, he worked as a research associate at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City for two years before entering graduate school. He currently works part-time at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis as a research analyst. He is looking forward to reflection and discussion focused on the historical progression of economic principles and associated rationale that helped shape the foundations of the field. He enjoys biking, sailing, soccer, tennis, and baseball.

Danilo F. R. Silva was born and raised in Brazil and got his undergraduate degree, master’s, and PhD in economics from the University of São Paulo. He is now a research fellow at the HOPE Center at Duke University. His primary research field is the history of postwar macroeconomics, and he tries to understand the state of contemporary economic theory through a historical perspective. His personal objective in the Summer Institute is to gather more ideas on the origins and developments of modern economics.

Vera te Velde is a graduate student at the University of California Berkeley, specializing in behavioral (theoretical/experimental, mostly pertaining to social preferences) economics. She did her undergraduate studies in math and economics at Caltech. At the Summer Institute she hopes to put the current wave of new behavioral economics research in historical perspective and learn what earlier economic thinkers had to say on those subjects that are now being revisited. Outside of economics, Vera is an amateur astronomer and loves various outdoor activities like motorcycling, backpacking, and rock climbing.

Keith Teltser is originally from Frederick, Maryland.  He attended West Virginia University as an undergraduate, where he studied philosophy and economics. He is currently attending Michigan State University, pursuing a PhD in economics.  At the Institute, he would like to develop a deeper understanding of economic research methodology and the historical progression of economic thought. He hopes to do this with an eye toward his own future teaching and research, with some emphasis on bridging the gap between his education in philosophy and economics. His broadly defined areas of interest include taxation, regulation, intervention, welfare/normative economics, and markets for organs.

John Watkins is a PhD student in economics at Michigan State University, although he spent six years in North Carolina at Davidson College and UNC Greensboro. He is most looking forward to the lecture about Keynes's views on the Great Depression, and his opponents' responses. Outside of school, he likes to play golf and read history.