Frank
  • Director and Chair, Master of Science in International Affairs and Global Enterprise, Economics Department
  • Director and Chair, Master of Science in International Affairs and Global Enterprise (MIAGE)
  • Associate Professor (Lecturer), Economics Department
  • Instructor, Economics Department, Dixie State College

Current Courses

Fall 2024

  • ECON 202-090
    Princ Of Macroeconomics
  • ECON 2010-001
    Princ Of Microeconomics
  • ECON 2010-002
    Princ Of Microeconomics
  • ECON 2010-003
    Princ Of Microeconomics
  • ECON 2010-005
    Princ Of Microeconomics
  • ECON 2010-006
    Princ Of Microeconomics
  • ECON 2020-090
    Princ Of Macroeconomics
  • ECON 2020-290
    Princ Of Macroeconomics
  • PUBPL 6920-001
    IAGE Internship

Summer 2024

Spring 2024

Teaching Philosophy

  • I stress topic fundmentals
  • I relate the course principles to real life as often as possible
  • I use technologies to accelerate and enchance learning
  • I am sensitive to individual needs
  • I focus on being highly available to any student
  • I set high expectations, and deliver the learning to meet them

But, most importantly, I stress the importance of seeking truth, and frame the discussions we have on how to do that. That implicity leads to an attempt to understand  what "truth" is in the social sciences.

Courses I Teach

  • Econ 2010 - Principles of Microeconomics
    We will learn how individual “agents” in an economy make decisions. The agents are either consumers or producers, and sometimes both. The decisions they make are how much to consume or produce in the face of constraints of money, time, and other inputs. And we will learn how the output of an economy is distributed to the agents. We will also learn that economists think about these problems using “models,” which are simplifications of the real world designed to let us focus on important fundamentals without being distracted by all the complexities of reality. The models will introduce the fundamental economic ideas of markets, supply and demand. Much of our understanding will involve models of “perfectly” competitive markets, again a simplifying assumption to let us focus on fundamentals. Later, we will examine how agents behave in imperfect markets such as monopolies.
  • Econ 2020 - Principles of Macroeconomics
    This course will introduce you to the main Macroeconomic principles and theories.The focus will be on the mechanisms and processes taking place in the three main markets existing in a modern economy: the goods market, the financial market and the labour market. My goal is to teach you to think about economic issues analytically. Thus we will use economic history as well as basic algebra, calculus, and graphs. We’ll also discuss macroeconomic policies and tools in the context of past and current economic events affecting the U.S. economy and other economies across the world. In order to grasp contemporary debates related to the way economies and economic policies work in the real world, I will present content from a variety of sources including economic journals, blogs and newspapers such the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal.
  • Econ 3640 - Probability and Statistical Inference
    Build numeracy in probability and statistics. Numeracy is a journey…no one is completely numerate. So this is just another step, an important one, to building the necessary toolkit if you wish to understand and contribute to modern economic discourse. Enable understanding of economic literature. Statistics are widely used in modern economic studies. To understand what the authors are trying to say, and to be able to judge them critically, you need a good base in probability and especially statistics. To do quantitative research in economics should you choose to continue along that path, you will need these tools. So to be able to ask, and answer, a whole class of interesting and important economic questions (and beyond), you will need these tools.
  • Econ 4650 - Introduction to Econometrics
    This class has the potential for being one of the most rewarding classes you can take as an undergraduate – and a different experience as this is a class in applied economics. You will learn a lot about statistical modeling and learn to use software pack- ages to perform econometric analysis. This will be an applied class and should prepare you for working with data in a job environment or in graduate school. The class builds on Econ 3640 and we will review basic probability and statistics as we move through the material. No experience with computers is assumed, but we will use computers extensively.
  • Econ 7960 - Bayesian Econometrics
    Bayesian analyses have been an increasingly important part of modern econometrics. This course is introductory in nature with a focus on applications of Bayesian statistics utilizing programs written in R. It will be supported via WebCT (assignments, readings, data, and code). Grades are based on a handful of small assignments and largely based on a conference style presentation of research and discussion near the end of the term. Please check the WebCT calendar frequently. We will discuss this format in class in detail. I was an invited guest instructor to present a four week module of advanced time series econometrics.