For Current Students

  • Below are the key links for necessary student material for each course: TBD

  • You can find a time to meet with me by using my Appointments Calendar. Please be sure to add a note about why you’d like to meet so that I can be prepared. For the foreseeable future, I will hold one-on-one meetings on Zoom. If you cannot find a time that works for you, feel free to email me.

  • My courses will abide by the following Code of Conduct:

    We commit to creating a respectful, inclusive, and collaborative learning environment, acknowledging the wide range of perspectives we may have, while mindful that discrimination and oppression have no place at UMass. Our classroom promotes respect and sensitivity concerning differences of class, race and ethnicity, religion, politics, sexual orientation, gender, gender variation, nationality, citizenship status and people affected by ableism and ageism.

    Students are expected to engage in serious and honest inquiry. Disrespectful conduct including harassing of fellow students or engaging in abusive behavior will be dealt with according to the fullest extent of University policy. Students are expected to be present and give full attention to classroom discussions and activities.

    My courses will abide by the following UMass policies on academic honesty; pronouns; academic accommodations.

    UMass Academic Honesty Policies

    UMass Pronouns Policy

    UMass Accommodations Policy

Descriptions of Current & Future Courses

Teaching economics and public policy is a real joy. My goal as a teacher is grounded in my belief that no matter what students do in the future, they will always live in the economy, and as participants in a democracy, shape economic policy. My approach enables students to grasp the economic debates of our time, and to independently analyze economic data and narratives. 

Below are public syllabi and other materials from a selection of the courses that I have taught at UMass Amherst, along with links to course materials for current students. I use Moodle, Google Drive, and Perusall extensively; I highly recommend Perusall as a tool for student engagement, but unfortunately it does not allow for public display of assignments. Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in more details about any of these courses. 

In the past, I have taught Introduction to Macroeconomics, Introduction to Microeconomics, Public Finance, and Industrial Organization at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, the New School for Social Research, and New York University. 

I am currently developing a new course, tentatively titled “Political Economy of Corporations,” to be taught at both the undergraduate and graduate level. For more information, please contact me directly.

Econ 105: Introduction to Political Economy

This course will examine several of the major economic and political issues of our time, using a political economy approach to examine the major institutions of modern capitalism in the United States. The political economy approach takes account of the interdependence between the economy and the political and cultural features of society. Simply put, the economy is made by human beings, and does not conform to natural “laws” that automatically determine the results of economic policies. 

This course will equip students with a deeper understanding of several key issues that face us as participants in the U.S. economy, while using a political economy framework to conduct our analysis. Topics include: Income and Wealth Inequality; the Social Organization of Business; and Government Spending and Taxes. 

 


SPP 605: Microeconomics for Public Policy

This course will introduce students to microeconomic theory for public policy, and will prepare students for applied public policy courses. The economic content of the course is equivalent to “intermediate microeconomics,” but the course focuses on how to apply economic reasoning to questions that occur frequently when considering the public good. The goals of the course are (1) to have students understand microeconomic tools and (2) to prepare you to apply economic tools to public policy questions, both in future SPP courses and in real-world applications. 

 Specific economic concepts for policy analysis that we will study include: Understanding and critiquing measures of economic costs and benefits; Elasticities in the policy context;  Analyzing uncertainty with expected values;  Understanding how to conduct cost-benefit analysis; and Analyzing distributional impacts of policy decisions. 

 


SPP 610: School of Public Policy Capstone

The SPP 610: Capstone course gives second-year public policy students the opportunity to develop their own policy research project. The course focuses on how to craft an effective research question; how to conduct a literature review; strategies for writing, editing, and giving peer feedback; and culminates in a presentation of the student’s research.