Peter Nencka

Peter Nencka

Rose-Marie Garcia Anderson Assistant Professor of Economics
Miami University

Welcome! I am the Rose-Marie Garcia Anderson Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at Miami University and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

My research focuses on labor and public economics, with applications to economic history, education, and innovation. Before graduate school, I studied economics and philosophy at Beloit College.

You can find my CV here, and reach me by email at nenckap@miamioh.edu.

Research

Publications

Knowledge access: The effects of Carnegie libraries on innovation (with Enrico Berkes). Forthcoming at The Review of Economics and Statistics.
The returns to public library investment (with Greg Gilpin and Ezra Karger). American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 16 (2024): 78–109.
Media: Marketplace, MarketWatch, Fordham Institute.
School closures during the 1918 flu pandemic (with Philipp Ager, Katherine Eriksson, Ezra Karger, and Melissa A. Thomasson; also NBER WP w28246). The Review of Economics and Statistics 106 (2024): 266–276.
The Census Place Project: A method for geolocating unstructured place names (with Enrico Berkes and Ezra Karger). Explorations in Economic History, Vol. 87 (January 2023).
Crosswalks · Code
Predicting education attainment: Does grit compensate for low levels of cognitive ability? (with Audrey Light). Learning and Individual Differences, 2019.

Works in Progress

High schools and the uneven rise in American opportunity (under review) (with Ezra Karger and Alison Doxey Koetting).
Do pandemics change healthcare? Evidence from the Great Influenza (revise and resubmit, Journal of Health Economics) (with Rui Esteves, Kris James Mitchener, and Melissa A. Thomasson; also NBER WP w30643).
Soccer's record on the road: The effect of late-night sporting events on fatal car crashes (under review) (with James Flynn and Noah Meyers-Richter*).
Out of the university, into the workforce: Early 20th century scientific training and industrial research (with Xuechao Qian).
The Women's Ku Klux Klan and education in the 1920s (with Danielle Graves Williamson).

Book Chapters

"Credit Constraints Throughout Childhood and Education Attainment," in Annual Proceedings of The Wealth and Well-Being of Nations; The Miller Upton Forum, Volume XII, Beloit College Press, 2021.

*Former Miami University student

Teaching

Current Courses

Examining Economic Data and Models (undergraduate econometrics) — Miami University, Fall 2020–present
Graduate Applied Microeconomics (advanced causal inference and machine learning) — Miami University, Spring 2023–present

Past Courses

Introduction to Microeconomics — Miami University, Fall 2024

Other

I'm trying to read more books. In 2026, I signed up as a Hugo Award voter and started keeping a list of the history books I read. You can find both my evolving Hugo ballot and history reading here.

Contact