About

I am an Associate Professor of Economics at Gustavus Adolphus College and hold the Schnell Family Endowed Chair in Economics–Capital Systems. I received my Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University.

I am interested in political economy, innovation, health economics, and institutional analysis. I study how institutions shape discovery: what people are able to try, learn, build, and sustain under different political and regulatory arrangements.

My current research centers on two connected agendas. The first is forgone innovation: the discoveries, technologies, business models, and forms of organization that never emerge because rules make them illegal, unfundable, too risky, or too cumbersome to try. My recent article in the European Economic Review develops this idea by showing how regulation can prune the adjacent possible, narrowing not only what people may do now, but what future possibilities can be discovered.

The second is entangled political economy. This work examines how political and economic life evolve together, especially as rules, permissions, mandates, subsidies, and political relationships become woven into ordinary economic life. I am currently developing this line of work in a book project with Richard E. Wagner on democracy, human nature, and the erosion of liberal order.

Across these projects, I return to a common question: what happens when institutions narrow the space for experimentation, learning, and adaptation?

I grew up in Poland and came of age during the post-communist transition, an experience that shaped my interest in liberty, entrepreneurship, institutional change, and the often invisible costs of blocked discovery. I remain especially interested in the conditions that allow people to build self-defined lives.

I founded the Entangled Political Economy Research Network and have served on the Board of Directors of the Public Choice Society. My coauthored work on scientific advisory institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic received the Duncan Black Prize from the Public Choice Society.

I also write for broader audiences about institutions, discovery, freedom, health care, prediction markets, and civic life.