Research in the Department of Economics

Dr. Johnny Ducking's main area of research uses labor markets in sports to assess the impact of personal characteristics and league policies on labor market outcomes. He has utilized data from the National Football League (NFL), National Hockey League (NHL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and Women’s NCAA Division I College Basketball to study labor markets. He is currently working on estimating whether players who are on their first contract after being drafted by an NBA team (rookie contract) are being underpaid or overpaid relative to players who are free to negotiate with different teams (free agents).

Dr. Joshua Hendrickson studies monetary theory, history, and policy. His research covers everything from historical monetary institutions to contemporary monetary policy to Bitcoin. Much of his recent research focuses on the political economy of historical and contemporary monetary institutions. Currently, he has research projects that focus on how Bitcoin can be understood within the context of monetary theory and history as well as issues related to the disparate attitudes of countries about bitcoin adoption within their borders. He also has an ongoing research agenda that examines the ways in which national defense shapes societal institutions, public finance, and the international monetary system.

Dr. Clara Piano’s interests are in the institutions that undergird markets—such as law, family, and religion. One focus is the policy determinants of the fertility gap, which is a measure of how much people undershoot (or, less commonly, overshoot) their lifetime desired number of children. Her current research, coauthored with Dr. Ennio Piano, studies indissoluble marriage contracts from the perspective of law and economics. They argue that the prohibition on divorce and remarriage during the Middle Ages led to a greater emphasis on free spousal consent—young adults, not parents, choosing their own spouse. 

Dr. Ennio Piano’s research spans a wide array of historical topics, unified by a common goal: uncovering the economic logic behind past practices and institutions. His subjects include the reliance on mercenaries by medieval Italian towns, Napoleon’s efforts to curb draft-dodging during his European campaigns, the evolution of American motorcycle gangs in the 20th century, and the incentives facing slaveholders in the antebellum U.S. South. He explories issues related to the history of the Catholic Church dating back to the Middle Ages and is developing a framework to explain the rules adopted by Popes for regulating the election of their successors.

Dr. Ryan Rholes uses experiments, theory, and empirical methods to study the microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics. Broadly, his research aims to better understand how people perceive the world, how they acquire and process information, and how these perceptions and beliefs shape both individual decisions and aggregate economic outcomes. Current projects explore how people form expectations and how these expectations influence their economic decisions. He is also developing a research agenda on artificial intelligence and contracts, examining how AI reshapes both the design of contracts and how consumers interact with them.

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant to Dr. Garrett Scott and two University of North Carolina researchers for their work on the economics of airplane ticket prices. They analyze ticket price discrimination for factors such as loyalty status, amenities, and capacity. “Ideally, we are improving overall welfare––increasing company profits and getting consumers on planes who otherwise wouldn’t fly.” The work influences Scott’s econometrics and industrial organization courses, allowing students insight into what’s “behind the curtain.”

Dr. Henry Thompson's work falls at the intersection of Law & Economics and Political Economy. He studies the economics of institutions with a particular focus on the alternative customary, organizational, and contractual arrangements people develop amongst one another when they cannot use the government to protect their property rights. His recent work analyzes the likely impacts of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the evolution of the common law and the economics of existential risk posed by artificial general intelligence (AGI).