Teaching & Supervision

I teach courses at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College in econometrics, the political economy of gender, and the history of economic thought.

I am interested in supervising graduate students working on Marx's critique of political economy, household production, petty commodity production, critiques of sustainability and conservation, energy (production and consumption), local and regional economic development policy, waste and discards, and work outside the wage-relation.

GECO 6281: Advanced Econometrics

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2023, 2024, 2025

This course is a survey of topics related to specification, estimation, diagnosis, inference, and interpretation in applied econometrics. Students will begin the course by studying the history and epistemology of econometrics to better motivate their own use of statistical methods for economic research. A major course objective is for students to gain greater mastery in framing an answerable econometric research question, formulating a hypothesis, specifying and testing a model, interpreting the results, and reviewing and applying the relevant literature to contextualize findings. Techniques commonly used in contemporary applied econometrics (micro and macro) will be covered at an advanced level.

GECO 5045: Political Economy of Gender

Semester: Spring

Offered: 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027

This course proceeds from Lise Vogel's assertion that “building a theory of women’s liberation around the category of ‘women’ … is a mistake.” If Marx's critique of political economy is a critique of economic categories, then the categories of the political economy of gender should be subjected to the same critique. We will develop this approach through initial readings of Marx's 1861–1863 Manuscripts and contemporary critical interpretations of Marx. Rather than taking categories like "women," "family," "home," and "housework" as given, we will treat them as historically specific social forms, drawing on the critique of political economy to investigate the relationship between household production and the reproduction of capitalist society. A study of the 1970s Domestic Labor Debates will be the primary focus of our readings, providing the context for our evaluations of current Marxist-feminist political economy, including what has come to be called "Social Reproduction Theory". These investigations will serve as the framework for students’ own application of political-economic theoretical considerations to a present-day social problem or policy question.

GECO 6181: Graduate Econometrics

Semester: Spring

Offered: 2027

This is a course in applied econometrics organized around the contemporary design-based approach to empirical research in the social sciences. The course is guided by the question, "What can you credibly say about the results of econometric research?" We will study the assumptions underlying regression and common research designs, the errors researchers make in interpreting their findings, and how a study's research design itself determines what kinds of claims it can support. Students will learn to interpret empirical results in light of economic theory, including weighing alternative explanations for those results. In weekly labs, students will work with real-world data to build skills in statistical software and good habits for replicable research that will serve them well in the workplace or in further graduate study. Throughout, the course takes a critical approach to these methods, paying attention to their limits as well as their potential uses for policy evaluation and analysis.

LECO 3010: Introduction to Econometrics

Semester: Spring

Offered: 2024, 2025, 2026, 2027

This course will give students an introduction to fundamental quantitative methods commonly used in economic research, with an emphasis on real-life research applications related to the course theme of race and gender-based disparities. Students will have the opportunity to learn computer programming skills and gain competency in statistical software through hands-on practical exercises using real datasets from published economic research to investigate race and gender-based oppression. We will also study examples of applied econometric research to see how quantitative methods can both illuminate and obscure the realities of identity-based oppression in capitalist society. By the end of the semester, students should be able to: explain how econometrics is used to make arguments and test hypotheses using statistical inference, explain and interpret the results of several linear regression functional forms, identify the assumptions of the classical linear regression model, identify and mitigate common econometric logic and data issues that happen when assumptions are violated, manipulate data and conduct their own research using statistical software, and explain the importance of reproducibility and creating work products that facilitate reproduction by one’s self and others.

LECO 3101: History of Economic Thought

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2024, 2025, 2026

This is a seminar-based course that critically interrogates the canonical history of economic ideas, focusing on pre-1900 authors and their primary texts. Beginning with the Ancient World—both “East” and “West”—we will examine major theoretical concepts in economics through their historical context, how they were developed, who developed them, the real-world impact of these ideas, and their applicability to today’s problems. We will be concerned not only with why some ideas from this period were abandoned while others retained, but also why some historical ideas are deemed “important” enough to learn in a course on the history of economic ideas. Thus, a secondary objective of this course will be analyzing how later economists across the political spectrum develop the “History of Economic Thought” as a political project that is central to the identity of economics as a discipline. Why is it that certain authors are considered part of the “History of Economic Thought,” elevated to the status of “Great Economists,” and others are excluded? Why is it that certain texts are seen as “seminal”, “important”, or “required reading” in the history of economic ideas and appear on syllabuses, and others are excluded? Through our investigations, we will discover the recursive relationship between socio-economic reality and economic ideas: social and economic conditions affect the evolution of economic ideas, while economic ideas can change socio-economic reality. This connection holds now as it did in the past.

LECO 2052: Feminist Political Economy

Semester: Fall

Offered: 2023

This course will explore how gender and sexuality shape the lives of people around the world through a feminist approach to economic inquiry. We will study a number of competing theories and scholarly approaches to help us understand the ways constructions of gender and sexuality—as well as race and class—impact the economic experiences of people in contemporary capitalism. Students in this course will learn that there is not one “feminist political economy”, but many possible feminist lenses we can use to examine economic activity.