Stephen Erfle

Stephen Erfle is a professor at Dickinson College. Although he was trained as a microeconomic theorist specializing in industrial organization and regulation, he has spent much of his academic life working at the borders of traditional economics. He has used his economist's toolkit to examine topics in a wide variety of fields including public health, exercise psychology, political geography, mathematics education, and communications theory in addition to economics. He has consulted for a...See more

Stephen Erfle is a professor at Dickinson College. Although he was trained as a microeconomic theorist specializing in industrial organization and regulation, he has spent much of his academic life working at the borders of traditional economics. He has used his economist's toolkit to examine topics in a wide variety of fields including public health, exercise psychology, political geography, mathematics education, and communications theory in addition to economics. He has consulted for a variety of organizations including the Seagram Classics Wine Company, the Forum on Education Abroad, and the Pennsylvania Department of Health. His Seagram Classics sabbatical reoriented the direction of his teaching and research as it turned his former analytical focus (theorem and proof) into a more empirical focus (what does the data tell us). It also led him to cofound the international business and management major at Dickinson College. One of the core courses in that major, Managerial Decision Making, teaches students to analyze the kinds of decisions he was asked to answer during his time working for Seagram Classics. He has spent much of his time in the past couple of decades devoted to pedagogical issues revolving around providing geometric interpretations and explanations for a variety of topics. The books and papers in these topic areas seek to explain economic and mathematical concepts in intuitive terms, often to students with limited mathematical backgrounds. He received his BS in Mathematics and BA in Economics from University of California, Davis, and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. See less