Rojhat Avsar

Biography

Rojhat Avsar, PhD, is Associate Professor of Economics at the department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences.

Dr. Avsar earned received his PhD in Economics from the University of Utah.

He is currently teaching in courses at the intersection of ethics, psychology, and economics.

He focused his early research on public policies and welfare economics which resulted in series of peer-reviewed articles:

(2018) “Re-framing the Moral Appeal of the Minimum Wage,” Ethics & Economics, 15(1), pp. 30-42. (2016) "Cultural integration and occupational achievement among Mexican immigrants along the US-Mexico border," Economics and Sociology, 9(1), pp. 11-21. (2015) “Ideographic Use of Economic Terms,” On the Horizon (Economics and Language special issue), 23(3), pp. 169-173. (2015) “A Rawlsian Defense of the Individual Mandate: The ‘Collective-Asset’ Approach,” Review of Social Economy, 73(2), pp. 146-153.

His current research has been motivated by his fascination by the nuances of human sociality and our species' capacity to create complex economic and social orders. In his recent book, The Evolutionary Origins of Markets: How Evolution Psychology and Biology Have Shaped the Economy, he integrated the growing body of experimental evidence on human nature scattered across a variety of disciplines from experimental economics to social neuroscience into a coherent and original narrative as to whether impersonal exchange relations are reflective of the basic human sociality that was originally adapted to a more tribal existence.

Degrees

B.S., Economics Hacettepe University 2001
M.S., Economics Hacettepe University 2003
Ph.D., Economics University of Utah 2010