Affiliation
Research Coordinator - Center for Community Based Enterprise
Contact Information
I maintain the C2BE website, and you can feel free to contact me if you have any feedback.
Resume
Summary
I am an economist (Ph.D., Wayne State 2007) with professional computer skills who worked full-time during his doctoral program as a database and web developer, while simultaneously serving in a string of elected leadership positions in a statewide political organization, participating as an officer in my condo association's Board of Directors, and doing a year of undergraduate teaching to boot.
Education
- 2007 PhD in Economics - Wayne State University
- Required coursework in microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics; field coursework in health, industrial, and labor economics; undertook directed studies in income and wealth concentration; dissertation subject is the effect of wealth concentration on economic growth
- 1996 Masters of Public Administration - Wayne State University
- Policy analysis concentration; performed independent research on wage evolution in final semester
- 1993-1994 Computer Science Coursework - Wayne State University
- Advanced data structures, assembly language
- 1992 B.S. (Global Reform / Mathematics) - University of Michigan
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Employment
- 1999-Present Programmer - Washtenaw Intermediate School District
- Work with staff in all departments to define processes and create applications to support them; develop and teach courses on productivity software; member of state's Single Record Student Database advisory committee; member of department Disaster Recovery planning committee
- 2002-2003 Graduate Teaching Assistant - Wayne State University
- Planned, taught and graded two semesters of undergraduate microeconomics; received very favorable student evaluations
- 1998-1999 Programmer - State of Michigan Family Independence Agency
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- 1996-1998 Management Intern - State of Michigan Family Independence Agency
- Hired through competitive professional internship program; performed ongoing budget projections; wrote business plan; developed tracking systems for statewide facilities contracts; instigated Michigan's non-IT Y2K effort
- 1995-1996 Administrative Assistant - Joint Cities Development Corporation
- Wrote several grant requests to fund both general operations and specific projects; also coordinated internal communications amongst members of Board of Directors
- 1995 Research Assistant - Wayne State University
- Drafted initial article summaries and classifications for Prof. Harold Wolman as preparation for a "state of the field" article; received publication credit (see Publications and Presentations, below)
Publications and Presentations
- 2004 Where Are the Flying Cars? - Pyramid Magazine (online), August 13, 2004
- A speculative article which applies economic logic to the title question; dealt with the differing marginal benefits of different technologies, first mover advantage, and sunk costs as barriers to entry
- 2004 Economics: The Dog That Doesn't Bark - US Green Party Nominating Convention
- A presentation targeted at non-economists highlighting how abstractions in standard economic models, when taken literally in public policy discourse, tend to obscure factors of concern to political progressives; presented at US Green Party Nominating Convention (Milwaukee, WI, June 2004)
- 1999 Louis Kelso Made Simple - Owners at Work, Winter 1998-99, pp. 5-6
- A brief summary for general audiences of the central ideas of Louis Kelso, creator of the Employee Share Ownership Program
- 1996 The Politics of Local Economic Development - Economic Development Quarterly. May 1996, pp. 115-150.
- Received publication credit for assisting Professor Harold Wolman; an extensive summary of current literature on the different motivations that drive municipalities to pursue economic development policies; widely cited
Course Papers
- 2005 An Examination of Altonji and Dunn's 'The Effects of Family Characteristics on the Return to Education'
- An attempt to reproduce and extend the results of a published paper; analysis suggested some sort of significant error in their handling of the data, as their summary statistics could not be reproduced based on their stated data filtering process or any reasonable variation thereof
- 2004 Estimating the Effect of Health Care Expenditures on Mortality
- An empirical analysis of OECD data on mortality and health care expenditures between 1960 and 1999, which found that the effectiveness of expenditures in reducing mortality rates appears to be growing over time
- 2004 United States v. Borden Company and the anti-trust treatment of agricultural cooperatives
- A review of the legislation and case law dealing with the anti-trust treatment of agricultural cooperatives, concluding that while firms within the cooperative are allowed to collaborate in ways that would be illegal for normal firms, the cooperative itself is not allowed to engaged in anti-competitive acts within the larger marketplace
- 2003 A review of industrial organization research on labor-managed firms
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- 2003 A preliminary investigation into the short-term dynamics of income concentration in the United States
- A directed study project examining patterns in the evolution of the Gini coefficient of income in the US between 1947 and 2000, identifying a unit root process (in keeping with the literature), finding a strong positive relationship between the unemployment rate and growth in inequality, and noting a surprising discrepancy between the drivers of changes in inequality across households and across families
- 2003 Concentration of wealth and the narrative models of the Capital Ownership Group
- A directed study project examining how intuitive ideas of the significance of wealth concentration prevalent within the Capital Ownership Group (see Memberships) related to common approaches to the topic within the economic literature
Leadership Positions
2009-Present President - Board of Directors, Meadows of Van Buren Condo Association
2005-2009 Vice President - Board of Directors, Meadows of Van Buren Condo Association
2005-2006 Vice-Chair (Whip of State Central Committee) - Green Party of Michigan
2003-2005 Corresponding Secretary - Board of Directors, Meadows of Van Buren Condo Association
2001-2004 Representative to Coordinating Committee of US Green Party - Green Party of Michigan
2001-2002 Bylaws Committee Chair - Green Party of Michigan
2001-2002 Platform Committee Chair - Green Party of Michigan
Memberships
- 1998-Present Capital Ownership Group
- Founding member of the COG virtual think tank; contributor of several essays to the archives; attended annual meetings 1998-2002
- 1998-Present National Center for Employee Ownership
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Other Skills and Abilities
- Extensive project management experience - Comfortable taking a group of people through the process of defining project goals, task lists, and timelines, and then guiding the group through completion of the project
- Proficient in facilitating discussions - Adept at keeping groups of up to several dozen people on task in negotiations and policy discussions, both in person and online
- Veteran IT professional - Experienced programmer in several languages and a quick study with new ones; intimately familiar with database development and web application design; wide general competence with all classes of office software
- Strong people skills - Friendly, outgoing, able to work as part of a team
- Moderate fluency in Spanish
Categories: Advisory Board
