Professor Taylor joined the Department of Economics at Duke University in the fall of 2000 after spending nine years on the faculty at Texas A&M University. He earned his doctorate in economics from Yale University in 1992. He served as a National Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University from 1995 to 1996, a Research Fellow for The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation from 1996 to 1998, and a Research Associate of the Private Enterprise Research Center at Texas A&M University from 1995 to 2000. Professor Taylor taught in the American Economic Association Summer program from 2003 to 2007, and he served as the Director of Graduate Studies for Duke Economics from 2003 to 2006 and again from 2011 to 2018.
Taylor's primary research interest is microeconomic theory with emphasis on the areas of Industrial Organization, Political Economy, and the Theory of Contracts. He has worked on a variety of topics such as: the optimal design of research contests, the causes and timing of market crashes, and consumer privacy. Professor Taylor's research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, among others. He has served on the editorial boards of numerous journals including: the American Economic Review, the RAND Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Industrial Organization.