Economics’ Bill Craighead Teaching International Trade, Macroeconomic Analysis

The Department of Economics welcomes William “Bill” Craighead, assistant professor.

Craighead is an expert on international economics, open-economy macroeconomics and economic history.

“I’m currently researching how exchange rate policy affects employment in different sectors of the economy,” he says.

In addition to his research, he is teaching an upper-level elective, International Trade, and a core course called Macroeconomic Analysis.

“This is a particularly exciting time to be studying macroeconomics,” he says. “While the economic slump has unfortunately brought a great deal of hardship to many people, it has raised a number of issues that I can discuss with the students in class.”

Craighead earned a B.A. in economics and social thought from Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.; and a M.A. and Ph.D in economics at the University of Virginia. His dissertation was titled “Real Rigidities and Real Exchange Rate Dynamics.” This paper showed that accounting for the costs of moving labor between sectors of the economy and of distributing imported goods to consumers could help explain the high volatility of exchange rates.

Prior to beginning graduate study, he wrote about Latin American corporate loans for a trade publication in New York.

After graduating in 2006, Craighead taught economics courses at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, as an assistant professor. In 2009-10, Craighead took a leave from Miami University to take a one-year visiting position at Wesleyan. During that time, he taught International Trade, Equilibrium Macroeconomics, International Economics and Macroeconomic Analysis.

When a tenure-track macroeconomics position opened at Wes, Craighead applied.

“I went through the interview process just like a regular job candidate. It was nice, though, to have a chance to take a ‘test drive’ by being a visitor before committing to a permanent position,” Craighead says. “It’s great to come to an institution where you already know you like your colleagues and students.”

Craighead is the author of four recent publications including, “Interest Differentials and Extreme Support for Uncovered Interest Rate Parity,” published in the International Review of Economics and Finance, October 2010; and “Across Time and Regimes: 212 Years of the US-UK Real Exchange Rate,” published in Economic Inquiry. This article examines how the relationship among the Dollar-Sterling exchange rate and inflation in the US and Britain has evolved since 1794.

He has two papers on under review titled “Specific Factors and International Monetary Policy Coordination,” and “Temporal Aggregation and Purchasing Power Parity Persistence.”

Craighead, who was raised in Michigan, resides in Middletown and is an avid Detroit Tigers fan. In his spare time, he offers economics musings on a blog called Twenty-Cent Paradigms. He shares his “unofficial advice” on “Considering Graduate School in Economics” online at http://bcraighead.faculty.wesleyan.edu/gradschool/.