michael D. Makowsky assistant
Professor
department
of
Economics
towson University
published
Articles
More
Tickets, Fewer Accidents: How Cash-Strapped Towns make for Safer Roads
(with
Thomas Stratmann)
Journal of Law and
Economics, Forthcoming
Emergent
Extremism in a Multi-Agent Model of Religious Clubs
Economic
Inquiry, April 2012, Volume 50, Issue 2
Religion,
Clubs, and Emergent Social Divides
Journal
of Economic Behavior and
Organization,
September 2011,
Volume 80, Issue 1, Pages 74-87
A
Theory of
Liberal Churches
Mathematical
Social Sciences, January
2011,
Volume
61, No. 1, pages 41-51
Innovation,
Price Dispersion, and Emergent Increasing Returns to Scale
(with David M. Levy)
Journal
of Economic Behavior and Organization, March
2010, Volume
73, No. 3, pages
406-417
Determinants
of Traffic Citations: Political Economy at Any Speed
(with
Thomas Stratmann)
American
Economic Review, March 2009,
Volume 99, No. 1
From
Scholarly Idea to Budgetary Institution: The Emergence of Cost-Benefit
Analysis (with Richard E.
Wagner)
Constitutional
Political Economy,
March 2009, Volume 20, Issue 1
Accidental
Atheists: An Agent-based Model of Religious Regionalism (with
Laurence R.
Iannaccone)
Journal
for the
Scientific Study of Religion,
March 2007, Volume
46 (1), pages
1–16
An
Agent-Based Model of Mortality Shocks, Intergenerational Effects, and
Urban
Crime
Journal
of Artificial
Societies and Social Simulation, March 2006, Volume 9, Issue 2
papers
Under Review
Emergent
Pareto-Levy Distributed Returns to Research in a Multi-Agent Model of
Endogenous Technical Change
(with David Levy)
Endogenous
Group Formation through Unproductive Costs (with
Jason Aimone, Laurence
Iannaccone, and Jared Rubin)
An
Agent-Based Model of Centralized Institutions, Social Network
Technology, and Revolution (with Jared Rubin)
Regulatory
Enforcement, Politics, and Institutional Distance: OSHA
Inspections 1993-2010 (with Juergen Jung)
Unemployment,
Politics, and the Enforcement
of Immigration Law (with Thomas Stratmann)
working
Papers / work in Progress
Free Riding
with Other People’s Money:
Contributions
to Public Goods by Trustees (with Wafa Orman and Sandra Peart)
Knowing What You Don't Know:
Education, Intelligence, and Opinion
Intensity (with Stephen Miller)
Hierarchy in a Public Goods
Game (with Siyu Wang)
State Churchs and Long Run Cultural Dynamics (with Charles North)
book
Reviews, Proceedings Papers, and Other Writings
An
Agent-based Model of Crisis-Driven Migration (with Tamas Makany,
Patrick Meier, and Jorge Tavares)
Proceedings
of the
Santa Fe Complex Systems Summer School, Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe,
New Mexico, USA, August 2006.
Also presented at the Political
Demography Conference: Ethnic, National and Religious Dimensions (ASEN
2006), London School of Economics, London UK, September 2006
Review:
Social Dynamics
Edited by H. Peyton Young and
Steven N. Durlauf
Journal
of
Artificial Societies and Social Simulation,
June 2005 Volume 8,
Issue
3
Human Navigational
Heuristics in Solving the Euclidean Travelling Salesman Problem
(with Tamas Makany)
(unpublished
manuscript)
popular
Media (interviews and references to my work)
television:
Fox
5 WTTG News Interview
NBC
7 WHDH News Interview
podcasts:
National
Tax
Foundation (interviewed by K.
Padgett)
print:
Slate,
by Tom Vanderbilt
Boston Globe Feature
by Eric Moskowitz
New York Times
Column by Judy Chevalier
Chicago Tribune
Column by John Hilkevitch
The Atlantic Monthly,
Primary Sources
The
New
Republic by Zubin Jelveh
blogs:
National
Affairs (2/11/11)
(1/30/10)
(3/10/11)
Marginal Revolution (1/9/09) (2/20/07)
(2/17/11)
Business Week (9/4/2007)
Economist's View (9/02/07)
How We Drive (1/9/09) (11/15/08)
Blogs of the St Louis Times-Dispatch,
Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, Potomac News (my
childhood hometown newspaper) and various other
newspapers have also blogged/written about my work, but don't prefer to
keep their links up and running. Please drop me a note if any of the
above links are now empty, or if there
are links you would prefer I
include.
.
models
The
applets requires
Java 1.4.1 or higher to run. They will not run on
Windows 95 or Mac OS 8 or 9. Mac users must have OS X 10.2.6 or higher
and use
a browser that supports Java 1.4 applets (Safari works, IE does not).
On other
operating systems, you may obtain the latest Java plugin from Sun's
Java
site.
Urban Crime
(CAMSIM)
Religious
Regionalism
(MARS) with
Laurence R.
Iannaccone
- A preliminary user guide
to the model is available here.
* This a sampling of
my Netlogo
models only . If you are interested in my java models, please email me
and I will be happy to honor your
request. I also have java applets for some of my models that I am happy
to share.
teaching
ECON 201
Syllabus
ECON 640
Syllabus
ECON 504
Syllabus
(brief)
Biography
I
am a former
waiter, tour guide, radio dj, cashier, buffet re-filler, admin,
investment
pundit and public school teacher with a BA in biology
and economics from the University of Virginia. The logical next step
was graduate studies, leading to a Ph. D. in
economics at George Mason University. I am now an assistant professor
of economics at Towson University. My research to date focuses
on complex social phenomena, such as religious regionalism,
culture divides,
extremism, and rapid social change. I also pursue
more
traditional applied microeconomic interests in law/regulatory
enforcement,
public finance , and local
political economy. I also have some interesting (e.g. weird) models of
price dispersion and increasing returns to
scale. More importantly, I am a competent deck hockey goalie with a
solid glove hand and a surprising capacity to get my pads to the low
corners, albeit one who does (occasionally) wander off his
angle. If you think you have the skills to get a shot by me, I advise
you to contact the good people at DCStreetHockey.com.
This site does not have a hit counter,
but if it did I
assure you
that the number would be both large and comprised of many digits.
This
page is
maintained, poorly, by
Michael Makowsky