About

I am an economist with the Office of Economic Research in the Office of Advocacy at the United States Small Business Administration. Before coming to the Small Business Administration, I worked at the Department of Health and Human Services and earned a doctorate in economics from Cornell University. My CV provides additional information about my professional background.

Interests outside of economics include writing and moral philosophy. I am a Christian and an admirer of Confucianism and Stoicism. The quote at the top of the page, “What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness,” is from the excellent Gregory Hays translation of Meditations from the Stoic Marcus Aurelius.

To see the nature of a sunbeam, look at light as it falls through a narrow opening into a dark room. It extends in a straight line, striking any solid object that stands in its way and blocks the space beyond it. There it remains….

What doesn’t transmit light creates its own darkness.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 8.57