John Turner ('95)

During the two-year period following his graduation from W&L as a mathematics/economics double-major, John Turner worked as an assistant director of development for the National Environmental Policy Institute in Washington DC. In that position, he observed how influential economists are on Capitol Hill, which contributed to his decision to enter UVA's graduate economics program in the fall of 1997.

He earned an M.A. (1999) and Ph.D. (2002) in economics from UVA, and has developed wide-ranging research interests, which include industrial organization, technology and intellectual property, implementation and mechanism design, and time-series forecasting. Fall 2002, Turner returned to his home state of Georgia to become an assistant professor of economics at UGA. Based on the high quality of his teaching and research, he was promoted to associate professor in 2008. Here's a sampling of titles from Professor Turner's list of journal-articles: "How not to Raise Money", "The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's Impact on Patent Litigation", "Trade Liberalization, Outsourcing and the Hold-Up Problem", "Patent Damages and Spatial Competition". Turner has received research grants from a number of sources, including the National Science Foundation, the UGA Research Foundation, and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

Professor Turner stresses the importance of mathematics training for undergraduates potentially interested in pursuing an advanced degree in economics. UVA, for example, expects its first year graduate students in economics to complete Mathematical Economics I & II, which cover topics from, e.g., single and multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations. Turner spent many hours during his first year of grad school helping a number of his classmates get up to speed mathematically, He found his work in W&L's real-analysis sequence (Math 311 & 312) to be especially helpful.