Neil Skaggs joined the faculty of Illinois State University as Assistant Professor of Economics in August 1979. He completed his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1980, with monetary economics as his major field. Dr. Skaggs was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 1985 and promoted to Professor in 1996.
In his career at ISU, Prof. Skaggs has taught microeconomics at the principles level and macroeconomics at all levels, from principles to doctoral, as well as money and banking, history of economic thought, and a variety of other classes.
Prof. Skaggs's early research agenda focused on the political behavior of the Federal Reserve System, the topic of his doctoral dissertation. After putting his research on hold to write a principles text in the late 1980s, he redirected his research efforts to the history of monetary thought. Most of his articles have focused on nineteenth-century British monetary thought.
Prof. Skaggs and his wife of 27 years, Barb, have four daughters, the oldest of whom (Caroline) is enrolled in the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University Michigan, having graduated from Augustana College in 2002. Her husband Jim is enrolled in the Ph.D. program in Economics at Michigan, which pleases his father-in-law a great deal. The second daughter, Becky, is a junior at Washington and Lee University (Lexington, VA) this academic year. Meredith and Lindsey both attend University High School in Normal.
A committed Christian, Prof. Skaggs has taught adult Bible school for twenty-five years and is serving as the faculty representative for the Encounter student group at ISU for the twenty-fifth year. In his spare time he referees soccer, follows the St. Louis Cardinals (baseball) and the Duke Blue Devils and ISU Redbirds (basketball), and raises hostas. (You don't know what a hosta is? Ask the Prof; he'll be gratified to know that you've actually looked at his personal page.)
"H.D. Macleod and the Origins of the Theory of Finance in Economic Development," History of Political Economy 35, Fall 2003.
"Thomas Tooke, Henry Thornton, and the Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy," Journal of the History of Economic Thought 25, June 2003.
"The Development of Nineteenth-Century British Monetary Orthodoxy," International Journal of Economics and Econometrics 10, January-March 2002.
"Learning by Trial and Error: A Case for Moot Courts," Journal of Economic Education 31, Spring 2000 (with J. Lon Carlson).
"Adam Smith on Growth and Credit: Too Weak A Connection?" Journal of Economic Studies 26 (6), November 1999.
"Changing Views: Twentieth-Century Opinion on the Banking School-Currency School Controversy," History of Political Economy 31, Summer 1999.
"Debt as the Basis of Currency: The Monetary Economics of Trust," American Journal of Economics and Sociology 57, October 1998.
"Henry Dunning Macleod and the Credit Theory of Money," in Money, Financial Institutions, and Macroeconomics, Avi Cohen, Harald Hagemann, and John Smithin, eds., Recent Economic Thought Series (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997).
"U.S. Fiscal Policy and Trade Deficits: A Broad Perspective," Southern Economic Journal 62, January 1996 (with Hassan Mohammadi).
"Henry Thornton and the Development of Classical Monetary Economics," Canadian Journal of Economics 28, November 1995.
"The Methodological Roots of J. Laurence Laughlin's Anti-Quantity Theory of Money and Prices," Journal of the History of Economic Thought 17, Spring 1995.
"The Place of J. S. Mill in the Development of British Monetary Orthodoxy," History of Political Economy 26, Winter 1994.
"John Fullarton's Law of Reflux and Central Bank Policy," History of Political Economy 23, Fall 1991.
"A Theory of the Bureaucratic Value of Federal Reserve Operating Procedures," Public Choice 43, 1984.
"Banking Sector Influence on the Relationship of Congress to the Federal Reserve System," Public Choice 41, 1983 (with Cheryl Wasserkrug Cohn). Reprinted in E. F. Toma and M. Toma, Central Bankers, Bureaucratic Incentives, and Monetary Policy, Financial and Monetary Policy Studies Series, No. 13 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1986).
"The Federal Reserve System and Congressional Demands for Information," Social Science Quarterly 64, September 1983.
Economics: Individual Choice and Its Consequences, 2d ed. (Cambridge, MA and Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 1996) with J. Lon Carlson. (First edition with Alan E. Dillingham and J. Lon Carlson, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1992.)