Eric Hoyt

Welcome to my site!  I am an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island.

My research interests include the impact of employee ownership on workplace productivity, employment stability, and earnings and wealth inequality, the impact of wrongful discharge laws and antidiscrimination laws on employment diversity and other labor market outcomes, and the impact of the "gig economy" on workers and firms.

I have received a Louis O. Kelso/Employee Ownership Foundation Fellowship (2023-2024 and 2025-2026) for my current research project investigating the impact of employee ownership on workplace productivity, employment stability, and workplace earnings inequality and other worker-level outcomes.   In this work, I examine the largest to date establishment level data set on employee ownership and participatory management practices using confidential Census microdata.  

My paper with Dr. Fidan Ana Kurtulus  studying the impact of state adoption of wrongful discharge laws and antidiscrimination laws on women's occupational employment representation was recently published by the journal Labour.    This paper is the first to investigate the impact of state adoption of wrongful discharge laws on occupational gender diversity within American workplaces, and uses restricted establishment-level longitudinal data that are uniquely suited for the analysis of this topic obtained from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEO-1 Employer Information Reports).  This paper  comes out of my dissertation research on the impact of wrongful discharge laws, a court-based form of employment protection in the U.S. on union density, wages, job tenure, and on-the-job training. 

During 2018-2020, I completed a two-year post doc as the Research Director of the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I conducted empirical analyses using restricted-access EEO-1 data obtained from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). I also oversaw the work of research assistants, coordinated grant activity, and identified significant changes and trends for online interactive visualizations. 

During 2017-2018, I worked as a visiting scholar in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University, assisting research on the effect of piece rate on worker health which resulted in a paper published in Public Health.  I also taught courses on quantitative research methods and economic theory for policy and planning masters students.   

I am currently teaching Principles of Economics-Microeconomics and Introduction to Economic Research Methods at the University of Rhode Island. 

I received my BA in economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and  completed my PhD in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.  I have served as a student representative on the governing board of the Workers’ Rights Consortium, an international labor rights monitoring organization, as a member of the executive board of UAW Local 2322, and conducted research as a summer intern with the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and as part of the first ever U.S. census of cooperative enterprises with the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives in 2010-2011.