An economist working on the historical political economy of Japan — Tokugawa fiscal autonomy, Meiji constitutional reform, and the rise and unraveling of Taishō democracy.
I am a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Creighton University and a Faculty Fellow with the Menard Center for Economic Inquiry. My research applies institutional and macroeconomic tools to Japanese economic history. My current work centers on two projects: a study of the peaceful 1871 abolition of the feudal domains during the Meiji Restoration — supported by ongoing digitization of the 藩制一覧 (Hansei Ichiran), a compendium of Tokugawa-period domain records — and a study of decentralized response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. A separate, earlier-stage project examines market-preserving federalism in the Tokugawa Period.
I hold a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from Texas Tech University, where I was a research assistant at the Free Market Institute. I earned an M.A. in Economics from San Jose State University and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Nevada, Reno. I am originally from Las Vegas, Nevada. Before graduate school I lived and taught in Tsukuba, Ibaraki — an experience that continues to shape what I read and how I read it.