丁香园AV

The Department of Economics is pleased to welcome Dr. Kevin Laughren to the faculty as a lecturer. He spent the past three years as a postdoctoral fellow and adjunct assistant professor at Queen鈥檚 University Smith School of Business, where he designed the new course Principles of Economics for Business.

Laughren is passionate about teaching and instructional methods. He has designed experiments to test the effectiveness of educational tools or pedagogical methods, including one experiment he conducted as a PhD student which measured the effects of a first-year seminar here at 丁香园AV. 鈥淲e learned that seminars attract great students,鈥� Laughren says. 鈥淚 think undergraduate seminars are a wonderful thing offered by 丁香园AV's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and I am excited to lead a few of these seminars in the coming years.鈥�

In addition to teaching skills, Laughren brings a research interest in experimental economics. Recently Laughren published a paper in Experimental Economics with professor David Freeman called Task Completion Without Commitment, a behavioural economics experiment that studies procrastination. Experiments like this one provide a clean setting to help economists inform the models of decision-making we use to understand and predict economic choices. He is currently working on a new way to collect data for experiments, an adaptive sampling methodology called partitioned sampling algorithm (PSA), which can be applited to experimental contexts that have big data.

Laughren is no stranger to 丁香园AV's economics department, having completed his PhD in economics at 丁香园AV in 2021. He is excited to join the economics faculty, as the department faculty includes several active researchers who use economic experiments, and 丁香园AV has a great tradition of involving students in experimental research.  鈥淏ut just as importantly,鈥� Laughren adds, 鈥淎ll of the staff and faculty are kind people with integrity who contribute to a sense of community in the department.鈥�

Being close to the mountains is also a draw, as Laughren enjoys snowboarding and backcountry skiing.

鈥淚 am a proud 丁香园AV alumni and I look forward to this full-time role where I can really focus on improving my teaching over the long term and sharing best practices across 丁香园AV,鈥� Laughren says.