The James C. and Caroline Kautz Chair in Political Economy

The James C. and Caroline Kautz Chair in Political Economy endowment was intitiated to attract outstanding teachers and scholars to the Lindner Economics Department, further raising the college's national and international reputation as a place of excellent scholarship.

History of the Kautz Chair Endowment

David Brasington professional headshot

On October 26, 2006, James C. Kautz and Dean Karen Gould formally signed the endowment documents for the James C. and Caroline Kautz Chair in Political Economy. With their signatures, the Economics Department’s first fully-endowed Chair was established in the presence of Kautz-Uible Trustees Woody Uible and Jim Schwab, UC Foundation Vice President Bill Henrich, several Kautz-Uible Fellows, and the faculty of the Department of Economics.

David Brasington gave up a tenured associate professor position at Louisiana State University to join UC as an untenured assistant professor in 2008. The position at UC was made more attractive by the James C. and Caroline Kautz Chair in Political Economy. Since then, Brasington has regained tenure and associate professorship.

Brasington’s research has been cited over one thousand times. He does research on the link between house prices and school quality, school district consolidation, and school choice. He has published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Urban Economics and Real Estate Economics. He has taught everything from Introduction to Microeconomics to PhD-level Game Theory, with much of his teaching centering on Urban Economics and Public Economics. He has presented his research in numerous states and seven different countries. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Regional Science.