Pierce Plucker

Welcome! I am an Economics PhD candidate at Oklahoma State University. My research area is applied econometrics, which leaves the door open to working on an array of economic questions and collaborating with economists from different backgrounds! My applications include development, regional, and resource economics, while my methodological contributions fall in the causal inference/post-selection inference space. I like to leverage cutting-edge econometric methods — often incorporating machine learning — to uncover hidden patterns and heterogeneity in my research. These approaches are powerful and exciting, but they also tend to raise deeper questions about the methodology itself, which is what draws me into doing methodological work of my own. I am currently (fall ‘26) teaching my first course as instructor of record. Students are responding well to my instruction thus far, and evaluations will be posted on this website when available (December ‘26). I served as the teaching assistant for the doctoral econometrics sequence during my PhD, and would love to teach econometrics courses to both undergraduate and graduate students in the future.