Geoff Clarke

I am a lecturer in the economics department at Brandeis University

I study African-American banks and teach active learning classes

My fields:

• Economic History

• Applied Microeconomics

• Banking and Financial History

Research

My primary research focuses on banks owned and managed by African-Americans.

In my first project, I create a new data set of African-American banks in the early twentieth century, locating twenty banks that are not in the previous literature. I examine whether African-American banks have an effect on African-Americans in the county in which they are located.

I find that an additional African-American bank per thousand African-American adults in a county leads to a doubling of the rate of African-Americans who report employing at least one person, a good proxy for business ownership.

Teaching

I won the Sidney I. Simon Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award in 2016.

I’ve taught eighteen sections of four classes:

• Intermediate Microeconomic Analysis

• American Economic History

• Personal Finance and Financial Decision-Making (online)

• Econometrics

My student evaluation scores are consistently above the department average.

Service

I have a record of service to the economics department, creating a graduate student microeconomics seminar, as well as organizing several educational and social events.

I am a fellow of the PreDoctoral Leadership Development Academy, a one-year program preparing aspiring academics for service at their new institutions.