Kirstin Munro

Kirstin Munro
Economist, Queens NY.

Background

I am an Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance at St. John's University, Queens NY. The major theme of my research is the overlapping relationships between people, the economy, and the environment. An econometrician by training, I use both quantitative and qualitative methods in my work. I am interested in questions related to:

  • The production, distribution, and consumption of energy, and its relationship to environmental problems;
  • Labor, both paid and unpaid, and its relationship to consumption and production processes;
  • The economic growth and development of regions, and its relationship to social, economic, and environmental problems; and
  • Critiques of individual, firm, and government-scale sustainability efforts.

Research Interests

    While my research is grounded in a disciplinary perspective thanks to my graduate training in economics, both the methods and substance of my work are shaped by insights from relevant social theory and economic inquiry outside the mainstream.

    I am currently engaged in projects related to household sustainability practices, self-employment, and other forms of precarious work. Some of my past research includes topics related to immigrant wages, immigrant language choice, infant mortality, property taxes, the cost of regulatory compliance, consumer behavior in regulated industries, and hedonic models of property values near nuclear power generation facilities.

Personal

  • I live in Queens, NY, with my occasional co-author Chris and our Cardigan Welsh corgis, Wilson and Wendy.
  • In my free time, I'm knitting, sewing, watching horrible reality TV, and learning to throw pottery on the wheel.
  • I love flexidiscs and fanzines and the international pop underground.