Rachel Thurston Ph.D.

I teach microeconomics at the principles, intermediate, and graduate level at BGSU. I also have taught advanced undergraduate courses in auctions and in industrial organization.

I earned my PhD in economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My dissertation work considers traders in double auctions (auctions that have many buyers and many sellers) who are regret-minimizers, rather than expected utility maximizers. My interest in auction theory goes back to my years as an undergraduate student, when I majored in economics and mathematics at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. Auctions fascinate me because firstly they have very clearly-defined rules, which allows us to make rigorous and definite predictions and recommendations using game theory -- but auctions also reveal a very human aspect of markets, such as spite, collusion, or bluffing. My other research interests include game theory, behavioral economics, and decision theory.