Charles Staelin is a Professor of Economics and is currently serving as chair of the department. After attending Williams College, he moved to the University of Michigan where he received his A.B. in physics in 1966 and his Ph.D. in economics in 1971. He taught at Michigan and then Amherst College before coming to Smith in 1981. Over the years his research and teaching have shifted from a concentration on the development of the Third World, and especially South Asia, to an investigation of the theory of international trade and commercial policy under conditions of imperfect competition, product differentiation, factor mobility, and transportation costs. His approach to this topic is largely based on the tools of computational economics, especially multi-agent models and genetic programming. Economic geography plays an important role in his work and he is using changes in industrial location brought on by the North American Free Trade Agreement to inform his models. Staelin normally teaches courses in Intermediate Microeconomics, International Trade and Commercial Policy, The Design of Models in Economic Analysis, and Introductory Microeconomics.

Phone: 413-585-3621

Building: Seelye Hall #415

E-mail:cstaelin@email.smith.edu