Spotlight on our Faculty
Spotlight on our Faculty
Jeremy Fox , Associate Professor of Economics Research Interests : Industrial organization , econometrics , labor economics
Jeremy Fox is an Associate Professor of Economics whose main research interest lies in empirical industrial organization . Other areas Professor Fox specializes in include econometrics and labor economics . His research has covered various industries , such as mobile phone companies and venture capitalists , and he has also worked on issues within the labor market and firm productivity . Prior to joining the Rice Economics Department , Professor Fox previously held appointments at the University of Michigan as well as the University of Chicago . He obtained his undergraduate degree from Rice .
What has it been like returning to Rice as a professor ?
I would say that the similarities are that it is still a very comfortable , friendly campus and it is interesting having a lot of the faculty that taught me be my colleagues . So , people like James Brown and Marc Dudey were my teachers back when I was a student and now they ’ re my colleagues .
How did you become interested in economics ?
I was originally a political science major and I did complete the major , but I was looking for a more formal way of thinking about social science problems . I got into economics through taking freshman economics , and seeing what it was about and enjoying it .
What are your current research interests / projects ?
One project I ’ m working on is called dynamic matching , which is a game where people form relationships and take into account the benefit of a relationship today on the ability to make good relationships in the future . So , the project could be applied to labor markets for workers with terms . One application I ’ m working on is with a fellow at the Baker Institute , Ed Egan , and some other authors who aren ’ t at Rice . We ’ re working on accelerators and a special early-stage form of funding for start-ups , and how getting early-stage funding from an accelerator might affect the ability to get later-stage start-up funding from a more traditional venture capitalist .
What other current research in your area are you most excited about ?
I ’ ve noticed that a lot of people are working on the topic of bargaining , and we have some people working on that here at Rice like Hülya Eraslan , Antonio Merlo and Xun Tang among others . There ’ s also people working on bargaining as a way to understand , say , pricing in healthcare , where you have insurance companies bargaining with hospitals about the prices they charge their members . That ’ s being used to study a lot of policy issues in healthcare , about how we regulate health insurance markets and whether we should encourage mergers between hospitals to form larger systems or encourage insurance companies to team up and bargain collectively with hospitals . Of course , that ’ s related to matching since the hospitals are forming relationships with insurance companies .
What advice do you have for undergraduates who are looking to pursue further education in economics ?
My basic advice would just to be to take the more challenging courses earlier , so you can ask the professor to write a letter of recommendation for you based on your performance . Also , taking those courses early might allow you to become a research assistant or otherwise get involved in a research project that might help train you for a PhD program . I think the main idea is just to get started early . Eventually , if you ’ re going to a PhD program , you might be interested in taking some of the PhD courses in the department , and if you don ’ t take all of the undergrad courses by , say , your junior year it ’ s not going to be easy to take PhD courses your senior year .
Looking into the future , do you have any ideas you ’ re particularly excited about ?
I have a set of project ideas about bank mergers and trying to understand whether retail bank mergers are driven by synergies between the merging firms . If so , I want to investigate whether those synergies are primarily about the demand for banking services , like maybe because having more outlets of the same bank is beneficial to consumers , or are the synergies primarily driven by cost savings .
For more information on Professor Fox ’ s research projects , including his current working papers and his C . V ., see the Faculty Page on the Economics Department website .
Advising Corner
Spring 2018 Advising Office Hours
Monday 1:00 – 2:00 p . m . Maria Bejan , BKH 251
Tuesday 1:30 – 2:30 p . m . George Zodrow , BKH 260
Wednesday 4:00 – 5:00 p . m James Brown , BKH 250
Thursday 1:00 – 2:00 p . m . Mahmoud El-Gamal , BKH 240
Friday 1:30 – 3:30 p . m . Peter Hartley , BKH 262
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