I am from Pittsburgh; my father came to this country from Greece in the 1950s and my mom is from New Jersey. My sister lives in the Pittsburgh area and my brother lives in Colorado. I went to a public high school, Hampton High School, and ran cross-country and track. (My high school was featured in the film “Abduction.” I haven’t seen the film but unfortunately I heard it wasn’t very good.)

​

My bachelor’s degree (in Economics) is from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. (It’s not a military school even though it sounds like one.) At first, I was a Chemical Engineering major, but I found the classes boring and I liked the economics classes I had taken, so I switched. My senior year, I had trouble deciding whether to apply to law schools or to apply to Ph.D. programs in Economics. I decided I would be better off in a Ph.D. program, because lawyers sometimes have to appear in court, and I was nervous about public speaking.

​

The University of Pennsylvania accepted me, so I moved to Philadelphia in the fall of 1985, and started the Ph.D. program there. I found the first year difficult, but I learned a lot, and during the second year it seemed to get easier. I paid for graduate school by working as a teaching assistant, and that experience got me interested in becoming a professor. I received both a M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from U. of Penn., and got a job offer from Cal. State Northridge. I hadn’t really planned on moving to California. I didn’t know anyone out here, but I thought I’d give it a try for a year or two and see what it was like. That was in 1991.

​

Originally, in graduate school, my areas of specialization were Econometrics, Finance, and Economic History. Now most of my research applies econometrics to a variety of topics. I am also interested in Public Choice, which deals with the interaction of economics and politics. While teaching econometrics at Northridge, I found that students had a hard time understanding the econometrics textbooks I ordered for them (I tried a couple of different ones.) They told me they understood my lectures but after a while, they gave up on trying to read the textbook. This gave me the idea of writing my own book. It took 2 years to write and was published by Thomson/Southwestern.

​

I have been married since 1997 (we don’t have any children.) We are Christian. My wife is in Information Systems, so I have free 24/7 technical support for life. I run and do a little weightlifting, and of course I’m a Steelers fan.