About Me

I am Ryan Safner, Associate Professor of Economics at Hood College. My research broadly explores the political economy of innovation, technological growth, and intellectual property using the tools of new institutional economics, public choice, and market process economics. I’ve found that the idea of “increasing returns” is what most of my varied interests and projects gravitate around, so I have decided to grapple with these issues here.

Beyond research and writing about these topics, I regularly teach Microeconomic Analysis and Econometrics, rotating through economics electives such as Game Theory, International Trade, and Economics of Developments. I am a firm believer of providing public goods and promoting open source materials, so you can find all course materials on my course websites.

I am a passionate user of R for data analysis, and R Markdown and GitHub for writing reproducible research, version control, and managing my workflow. I blog on my personal website about using these tools in my research and teaching, and learning new tools “out loud”.

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A semi-weekly newsletter about economic theory, history of economic thought, and applied issues with a central focus on innovation and increasing returns. Written for a non-economists and experts alike.

People

Economist at the U.S. Copyright Office. Former Associate Professor of Economics at Hood College. Interested in increasing returns, intellectual property, and innovation. Views are my own and do not represent any organization or institution.