I am a Professor and Head of Department of Economics at the University of Tennessee. I am applied microeconomic theorist and and work on various topics in industrial organization, public economics, and environmental economics, among others. A central focus of my research is the internal organization of firms and incentives facing managers. One aspect if this is the incentives for managers to comply with environmental and other regulations. This work also extends to studying both risk-taking and cheating (such as fraud) by managers as they compete for advancement within a firm, and to studying how contracts can deter both malfeasance and shirking by managers. Some of my recent work has modeled how third-party certification affects the incentive of sellers to invest in product quality. My research has also explored a variety of other topics including the performance of charter schools and the response of public schools to competition from charter schools, job-search procrastination and, and the logic of retail rebate programs. Before joining the faculty of the University of Tennessee, I taught at Texas A&M University, where I earned my Ph.D., and at the University of Texas at Austin.

I have taught microeconomic theory and industrial organization for many years in the PhD program at Tennessee. I have advised over a dozen PhD students conducting research ranging from contest theory to environmental regulation. The range of backgrounds of students from all over the world and their research interests has contributed greatly to my own work.