My research in this area focuses on the economic insights of Plato, with one project developing a thread through Aristotle as well (draft available upon request).

• "The Psychology of Money in Plato's Republic." History of Political Economy 58 (2026), pp. 211–234. Abstract
  Plato is often characterized as being generally disdainful of money and as believing that pursuit and possession of money is morally corrupting. I offer a modification of this view: Plato does not think that money is dangerous in general, but that it is dangerous for individuals with great natures in particular. The vast majority of people, whom Plato would classify as producers in his ideal city, are psychologically insusceptible to the dangerous influence of money. Understanding this aspect of his moral psychology encourages more careful consideration of the role of money and, much more generally, economic activities in Kallipolis. This paper (1) offers an argument regarding Plato's moral psychology and (2) explores the function of money in his ideal constitution.
• "Plato's Market Optimism." Polis 39 (2022), pp. 456–465. Abstract
  Despite the extensiveness of top-down control in his ideal city, Plato takes seriously the idea that the market does not require total regulation via legislation and that participants in the market may be capable of self-regulation. This paper examines the discussion of market regulation in the Republic and argues that the philosopher rulers play a very limited role in regulating market activities. Indeed, they are concerned only with averting excesses of wealth and poverty. The rules and regulations that are foundational to the daily functioning of the market — enforcement of contracts, resolution of disputes, etc. — are endogenous to the market participants themselves. In allowing for this self-regulation, Plato expresses tempered optimism about the market and a profound confidence in his ideal city's educational program.
• "On Why the City of Pigs and Clocks are Not Just." Journal of the History of Philosophy 57 (2019), pp. 574–594. Abstract
  This paper isn't strictly about political economy, but it shows my early thinking about the principle of specialization. Some Plato scholars have recently argued that the "City of Pigs" — described in Book II of the Republic, before Socrates goes on to describe Kallipolis and the definition of justice — is better and more just than Kallipolis itself. I argue that this interpretation misconstrues Plato's conception of justice by ignoring three significant conditions that he establishes for making an entity eligible for being just. In overlooking these conditions, scholars have misconceived the definition of justice itself, resulting in an overestimation of the virtue of the City of Pigs.

Most scholars have focused on the Republic's account of nurture and education at the expense of its account of nature. My research in this area explores how Plato conceives of nature as a cause prior to nurture.

• "The Psychology of Money in Plato's Republic." History of Political Economy 58 (2026), pp. 211–234. Abstract
  Plato is often characterized as being generally disdainful of money and as believing that pursuit and possession of money is morally corrupting. I offer a modification of this view: Plato does not think that money is dangerous in general, but that it is dangerous for individuals with great natures in particular. The vast majority of people, whom Plato would classify as producers in his ideal city, are psychologically insusceptible to the dangerous influence of money. Understanding this aspect of his moral psychology encourages more careful consideration of the role of money and, much more generally, economic activities in Kallipolis. This paper (1) offers an argument regarding Plato's moral psychology and (2) explores the function of money in his ideal constitution.
• "Prison-Breaking from Plato's Cave." Classical Quarterly (2025), pp. 1–12. Abstract
  This article examines the philosophical significance of nature (φυσις) in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The word is used in the protasis of the conditional clause at 515b–c where Socrates proposes to inquire into 'what would be the manner of the release and healing from these bonds and this folly if in the course of nature (φυσει) something of this sort should happen to them'. This instance of 'nature' has been a matter of philological and philosophical debate, with attention paid principally to the narrow passage of the allegory for reconstructing Plato's meaning. This article argues from the standpoint of the argument of the dialogue as a whole, showing that a particular reading of φυσις coheres with the conception of human nature in the Republic's moral psychology. The discussion begins with consideration of the difficulties presented by the manuscript tradition, which sees variation in the recording of the clause in question. Then the attempts by scholars to resolve the problem — or else to express their inability to resolve it — are addressed and shown to be unsatisfactory. Finally, an interpretation that connects the mention of φυσις with Plato's conception of the philosophic nature, described in Book VI of the dialogue, is offered.
• "Φυσις in Plato's Republic." Ancient Philosophy 44 (2024), pp. 1–16. Abstract
  I examine the role of nature (φυσις) in the argument of Plato's Republic and demonstrate that the concept plays a more central role in advancing the dialogue's philosophical aims than has been appreciated by scholars. Socrates carefully distinguishes between the nature with which one is born and the nature that one has at the end of education. The former is one's "original nature," and the latter is that same original nature brought to fulfillment, a "fulfilled nature". Both of these are referred to as φυσις. Distinguishing them aids us in understanding the argument of the dialogue.

Scholars agree Smith was an avid reader of classical philosophy, but disagree about which ideas he adopted and to which school he was most loyal. My research in this area focuses on Smith's use of ancient frameworks for constructing his own moral theory.

• "Aspiration in Adam Smith's Virtue Ethics," Adam Smith Review (Forthcoming). Abstract
  Adam Smith's moral theory is widely recognized as virtue ethical in its framework. Such frameworks have at their core a specific kind of aspirational desire: the desire to understand and to continue improving that belongs to those individuals who are already meaningfully on the road to virtue. It is a desire for virtue informed by, and continuously transformed by, ever-increasing clarity about the nature of virtue. This paper seeks out this specifically virtue ethical type of aspiration in Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. Unlike other projects that have sought out aspiration in Smith as the desire to escape parochial values, my argument seeks a more stringent and specific standard, and aims to clarify Smith's place in the virtue ethical tradition.
• "Adam Smith and the Creative Role of Imagination." With Keith Hankins. In: Adam Smith and Modernity: 1723–2023 (ed. Alberto Burgio). New York: Routledge. Abstract
  That imagination plays a fundamental role in Smith's accounts of both sympathy and scientific inquiry is well documented. Smith scholars have also long recognized that the accounts of these roles presented in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and the History of Astronomy are broadly Humean. In particular, the exercise of imagination in both the social and scientific domains is limited by the extent of our experience. Whether we are "changing places in fancy" with our fellows, thereby giving rise to that all-important sentiment of sympathy, or conjecturing relations between observed phenomena in an effort to quell the sentiments of wonder and surprise, acts of imagination draw on what is already familiar in order to fill in the gaps in our understanding of new phenomena we encounter. Hankins and McDavid extend the traditional analysis of Smith's conception of imagination in three ways. First, they highlight the heretofore unappreciated role imagination plays in Smith's account of technological invention. Second, they argue that close scrutiny of Smith's discussion of invention reveals a distinction between two modes in which imagination is exercised: (i) a mimetic mode in which simple ideas from previous experience are faithfully applied to new circumstances and (ii) a creative mode in which much wider gaps are filled in with complex rearrangements of familiar ideas. Third, they argue that these two modes are operative in each of the domains in which imagination operates, and that exercises of imagination in one domain often help us overcome the limits on our imaginative capacities imposed in other domains.

The benefits of AI tools are on the far side of fostering trust between human principals and their AI agents. My research in this area explores that trust relationship in human-AI iterations of principal-agent relationships.

• "Markets, Agency, and Trust: AI Agents and the Knowledge Problem." With Lynne Kiesling and David Chassin. In: Review of Austrian Economics (Forthcoming). Abstract
  Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming market participation, raising key epistemological questions: Do AI agents enhance or diminish the aggregation of local, private, and tacit knowledge Hayek saw as essential to market processes? How does trust in both markets and AI shape willingness to engage in AI-mediated exchange? This paper examines these issues through market epistemology, agency relationships, and trust epistemology, analyzing how agentic AI reshapes the knowledge problem and principal-agent dynamics. Applying this framework to transactive energy markets, we show that AI shifts decision-making from human cognition to algorithmic processes that require user trust despite epistemic opacity, although it is no substitute for human cognition. Automated market design must therefore align agent actions with user preferences to ensure both efficiency and trust. Through the case of the TESS platform, we explore how epistemic and institutional structures influence agentic exchange, concluding that the future of automated markets hinges not only on technical optimization but also on fostering trust in AI systems.