Senior Fellows
James Caton
North Dakota State University
James Caton is a scholar at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth with the Center for the Study of Public Choice and Private Enterprise and an assistant professor of economics in the Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at North Dakota State University. He teaches undergraduate courses on macroeconomics, international trade, and computation. His research focuses on entrepreneurship, agent-based computational economics, market process theory, and monetary economics. He has published in academic journals such as Southern Economic Journal, Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, and Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy.
He co-edited Macroeconomics, a two volume set of essays and primary sources that represent the core of macroeconomic thought. He is also a regular contributor to the American Institute for Economic Research’s Sound Money Project, which conducts research and promotes awareness about monetary stability and financial privacy.
Abigail Devereaux
Wichita State University
Abigail Devereaux is the founder of the Complexity Economics Workshop and an assistant professor of economics at Wichita State University. Abigail is an economic theorist in an age where economic theory has been declared dead.
She graduated summa cum laude in physics from Boston University, then went on to get a masters in mathematics, there, too. She is very proud to have contributed in a small way while an undergrad to the discovery of the Higgs boson through her research work with ATLAS at Harvard High-energy Physics Labs.
She went to work at Wolfram Research after getting her math masters and got involved almost immediately with Wolfram’s complexity science summer school, where she was introduced to complexity ideas. She obtained her PhD in economics at George Mason University, during which she was a visting PhD fellow at New York University, and is now a theorist in complexity economics with a focus on its mathematical foundations. Her first book (with several wonderful co-authors), Explaining Technology, was published in 2023 by Cambridge Elements. Her articles have appeared in journals like Public Choice and the Journal of Institutional Economics.
David Harper
New York University
David A. Harper is Clinical Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at New York University and also Co-Director of the Program on the Foundations of the Market Economy at NYU. His research interests span institutional economics, Austrian economics and evolutionary economics, with a specific emphasis upon issues related to entrepreneurship, innovation, market dynamics, emergent phenomena, complex adaptive systems and economic development. His research output on complexity topics includes publications on the anatomy of emergence in economic phenomena and applications of the complex-adaptive-systems approach to capital structures, intellectual property rights, brands and online higher-education services.
Cameron Harwick
SUNY Brockport
Cameron Harwick is an assistant professor of economics at SUNY Brockport. He has published research on monetary theory, business cycles, cryptocurrencies, and the evolution of norms and institutions. He writes at cameronharwick.com and maintains the agent-based modeling framework Helipad.
Roger Koppl
Syracuse University
Roger Koppl is Professor of Finance in the Whitman School of Management of Syracuse University and Associate Director of the Whitman School’s Institute for an Entrepreneurial Society. Koppl’s research interests include the economic theory of experts, the theory of economic growth, complexity theory, and the production and distribution of knowledge in society.
Koppl’s Erdös number is 3.
Mikayla Novak
George Mason University
Mikayla Novak is Senior Fellow, F. A. Hayek Program, at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. The author of two books, and over 20 peer-review journal articles, Mikayla Novak has academic and professional backgrounds in economics, with a doctorate in economics (RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia) and a first-class Honors degree (University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia). Her research interests in complexity economics include the relationship between complexity economics and strands of mainline political economy, intersections between complexity economics and public policy, and interpretations of socio-economic phenomena (e.g., inequality) from complexity perspectives.
Richard E Wagner
George Mason University, emeritus
Richard E. Wagner has held faculty positions at the University of California at Irvine, Tulane University, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Auburn University, Florida State University, and George Mason University from which he retired (from the university calendar, not from thinking, reading and writing) in 2022. He has authored or edited around 40 books and monographs and published around 250 scholarly articles, with several works underway. His work centers the knotted problem of establishing and maintaining order in human societies in the presence of disintegrating forces that come from all directions.
His book Democracy in Deficit, authored with James M. Buchanan in 1977, explained how budget deficits created especial difficulties for democracies. His recent books continue that theme with an especial focus on societal complexity. Politics as a Peculiar Business (2016) presents an entangled political economy wherein politics and commerce are deeply mixed with each other’s activities. Macroeconomics as Systems Theory (2020) uses theories of systemic complexity to expose the illusory foundations of the entire post-war literature of government direction of economic activity. Rethinking Public Choice (2022) restates public choice theory in terms of ideas about social complexity. Rethinking Economics as Social Theory (2022) demonstrates that political action is not the source of order in human societies but is the source of disorder, contrary to most contemporary social science.
Research Fellows
Eric Alston
University of Colorado, Boulder
Eric Alston is a Scholar in Residence in the Finance Division at University of Colorado Boulder. Eric’s research applies insights from the fields of law & economics and institutions & organizations to research questions surrounding governance of complex social orders. More specifically, his publications and research projects explore constitutions, economic rights on frontiers, and digital governance. Alston’s outreach and service activities include advising constitutional design projects, as well as providing a range of governance design expertise for digitally networked organizations, including one of the world’s first data trusts.
Fernando Arteaga
University of Pennsylvania
Pedro Magalhães Batista
University of Leeds
Neil Chilson
Center for Growth and Opportunity
Neil Chilson is a lawyer, computer scientist, and author of the recent book “Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World.” As a senior research fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, Chilson researches how different regulatory approaches facilitate or suppress technological innovation and human progress. In particular, he focuses on competition and antitrust policy and emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and advanced computing.
Chilson joined CGO from major philanthropic community Stand Together where he spearheaded ST’s efforts to foster an environment that encourages innovation and the individual and societal progress it makes possible.
Neil is the former Chief Technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, where he focused on the economics of privacy and blockchain-related issues. Previously, he was an attorney advisor to Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen. In both roles he advised Chairman Ohlhausen and worked with staff on nearly every major technology-related case, report, workshop, or other FTC proceeding since January 2014. Neil joined the FTC from telecom firm Wilkinson Barker Knauer.
Neil has a J.D. from The George Washington Law School, a M.S. in computer science from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a B.S. in computer science from Harding University.
John Chisholm
John Chisholm Ventures
John Dana Chisholm founded and for five years served as Chairman/CEO of Decisive Technology (now part of Google). Later, he founded and for eleven years served as Chairman/CEO of CustomerSat (now part of FocusVision). Today he heads John Chisholm Ventures, a San Francisco-based entrepreneurship advisory and investment firm.
He has served as trustee of the Santa Fe Institute since 2010, on the MIT Corporation (board of trustees) from 2015-2021, and as president and chair of the worldwide MIT Alumni Association from 2015-2016. He is advisory board member for the Harvard Kennedy School Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, for the Atlas Network, and for the Gruter Institute for Law and Human Behavior. He is author or co-author of two US patents and has contributed to Forbes. He is the author of Unleash Your Inner Company: 10 Steps to Discover, Launch, and Scale Your Ideal Business and of Integral: A Mathematical Odyssey.
John holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He writes and speaks frequently on entrepreneurship, innovation, the future of education, holistic approaches to diversity and inclusion, and on what forms of regulation foster vs. stifle entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth. An avid mountain climber, he has summited Mounts Rainier, Shasta, Whitney, St. Helens, and a live volcano in Chile.
Santiago Gangotena
Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ
Max Gulker
Reason Foundation
Matthew Leo Kelly
University of Texas at Dallas
Matthew L. Kelly is a PhD Candidate in Finance at the University of Texas at Dallas and earned a B.S. in economics from Florida State University. His research focuses on how Knightian uncertainty, economic complexity and Hayekian knowledge problems can influence financial asset prices. Matthew’s experience as a public policy analyst at Florida State’s DeVoe Moore Center also spurred an interest in regulation, public finance, and the unintended consequences of institutions. Matthew’s research program sits at the intersection of liberal political economy and quantitative finance. His work is based in normative individualism, employing theoretical models and empirical analysis of asset prices to better understand how investors mediate uncertainty, share risk and coordinate production in dynamic markets economies.
Zach Kessler
Alan Turing Institute
Dr. Zachary Kessler is a postdoctoral research associate at the Alan Turing Institute where he builds large scale simulations of economic phenomena. His research predominantly looks to utilize computational modeling and AI to replicate and understand human institutions. Complexity, information theory, and cybernetics are all key components of his research approach. Dr. Kessler completed his Ph.D. in economics at George Mason University in 2022.
Jon Murphy
Nicholls State University
Jon Murphy is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Nicholls State University. He was formerly an Instructor in Economics at Western Carolina University and Research Fellow at the Institute for an Entrepreneurial Society at Syracuse University. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University. Prior to joining Western Carolina University, Dr. Murphy was a visiting Ph.D. scholar at the Institute for an Entrepreneurial Society as well as an adjunct professor of economics at Frederick Community College (MD). Dr. Murphy has published in information economics, history of thought, and pedagogy research. In a previous life, he was a consultant and forecaster for ITR Economics.
Pablo Paniagua Prieto
Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD)
Dr. Pablo Paniagua is Professor and Academic Director of the PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) Master’s program at Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD) and a Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Governance and Society in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London. His research focuses on governance and institutional analysis. He has authored over 20 articles, essays, and books dealing with various aspects of the political economy of externalities, banking, and the governance of complex social dilemmas. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge Journal of Economics, and Journal of Evolutionary Economics, among others.
Hilton Root
Mercatus Center
Alex Schaefer
New York University
Thibault Schrepel
Sorbonne
John Schuler
Kukun Home Investment Intelligence
John Schuler earned a BA in liberal arts at St. John’s College in 2009. He spent the next year as a Post-Baccalaureate student in mathematics at the University of Maryland College Park. From 2010 to 2015, he was a risk analyst at Fannie Mae. He earned an MS in statistics in 2017 from the American University, and an MA and PhD in economics from George Mason University in 2017 and 2020 where he focused on computational social science. Since 2021, he has served as a senior economist for Kukun Home Investment Intelligence. He has taught at Washington College, Southern New Hampshire University, and the Universidad Francisco Marroquin.
Vipin Veetil
Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode
Vipin works on monetary and macroeconomics using agent-based computational models. His models embody out-of-equilibrium interactions between agents on networks.
Student Fellows
James Calderon
George Mason University, PhD
Jaime Carini
Indiana Bloomington, PhD
Alexander Cline
Hillsdale College
Alexander Cline is a senior at Hillsdale College, where he studies economics and mathematics. Mr. Cline works as a research assistant for economists at the Harvard Kennedy School interested in occupational sorting and the demand for social skills. He also serves as president of Praxis, a political economy organization at Hillsdale. Mr. Cline is interested in applying methods and techniques from computer science to general equilibrium and systems-theoretic considerations. As a participant in the American Enterprise Institute’s Young Scholars Program, Mr. Cline researches the contributions of computational complexity theory to comparative systems analysis. Outside of complexity theory, Mr. Cline is interested in AI proliferation and the future of work, sustainability, and progress studies, among other things.
Vicente Moreno
Texas Tech, PhD
Vicente Moreno Casas is a Ph.D. student in Agricultural and Applied Economics at Texas Tech University and a Research Assistant at the Free Market Institute. He earned a M.A. in Economics of the Austrian School at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos and a B.A. in Economics at Universidad Loyola in Spain. His research interests cover Austrian economics, complexity economics, the history of economic thought, economic methodology, and comparative economic systems.
Jiri Nohejl
George Mason University, PhD
Jiri Nohejl is a PhD student in the Department of Economics at the George Mason University, PhD Fellow at the Mercatus Center and Chief Economist at Liberalni Institut. He earned his MSc in Applied Informatics and MSc in Finance from Prague University of Economics. His research interests include monetary theory, industrial organization and institutions at margins where information and complexity dovetail with economic theorizing.
Jonathan Plante
George Mason University, PhD
W. Benedikt Schmal
Heinrich Heine University, PhD
Benedikt is a PhD student in competition economics at the Duesseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) at Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf in Germany. His research interests are centered around the intersection of industrial organization, innovation economics, and institutional economics. He has been a Morgenstern fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a student fellow of the Public Choice Society. During his PhD, he already conducted research stays at KU Leuven in Belgium and the University of Reading in the UK. He did his undergraduate studies at Free University Berlin and received a Master’s degree in quantitative economics from University College Dublin.
Marcus Shera
George Mason University, PhD
Marcus is a 4th year Hayek Fellow with the Hayek Program at the Mercatus Center, a Smith fellow with the Adam Smith Program at George Mason University. He is also a lecturer in the Business School at the Catholic University of America. He researches the political economy of church and state, with a focus on the role of monastic orders. He also writes and makes videos at The Econ Playground.
Alec Stamm
Hillsdale College
Alec Stamm is a Senior at Hillsdale College: a liberal arts institution known for its emphasis on Public Choice, Institutional Analysis, and the Austrian School. It is home to Ludwig Von Mises’ personal library: his favorite author alongside Thomas Sowell. He is the vice president of Praxis: Hillsdale’s political economy organization. Each semester Praxis hosts leading economists to discuss the study of human action and the logical implications of choice. Majoring in economics and mathematics, he plans on pursuing a Ph.D. in Economics and a research career.
Michael Wroblewski
George Mason University, PhD
Affilate Scholars
Corbin Barthold
TechFreedom
Corbin K. Barthold is Internet Policy Counsel at TechFreedom. He hosts the Tech Policy Podcast and writes regularly for City Journal, Reason, Techdirt, and other outlets. Corbin likes to try to borrow complexity concepts and convey them to a popular audience.
Lenore Ealy
Universidad Francisco Marroquin
Karen Vaughn
George Mason University, Emerita
Matt Warner
Atlas Network
Matt Warner is president of Atlas Network where he applies multidisciplinary research to the practical exercise of affecting institutional change in 100 countries around the world. Matt developed the Coach, Compete, Celebrate (TM) model to accelerate innovation and innovation diffusion across a global network of 550 local think tanks, working to increase market access for low-income populations. He is the co-author of Development with Dignity: Self-determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty (Routledge, 2022). His work has been published in Foreign Policy, Forbes, Cato Journal, Democracy Digest, The Hill, and Harvard’s Building State Capability. He has a master’s degree in economics from George Mason University and is certified by Georgetown University in Organizational Development and Systems Change. He has studied agent-based modeling through Santa Fe Institute and has completed courses in growth diagnostics and problem-driven iterative adaptation (PDIA) through Harvard’s Executive Education program. Matt was also a 2019-2020 Penn Kemble Fellow with the National Endowment for Democracy.