People Group Archives: Economics Faculty

Department of Economics Sami Alpanda is a macroeconomist with research interests in monetary and fiscal policy, macro-financial linkages, housing and international economics. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2004. Prior to joining the UCF faculty in 2015, he worked in various research positions at the Bank of Canada.

Harry J. Paarsch was born in Ashcroft, British Columbia, Canada, and grew up in British Columbia, first in the village of Clinton, in the Cariboo region, which is located in the southern interior of the province, and then in the village of Qualicum Beach, on Vancouver Island. After attending grade schools in Dog Creek, as […]

Executive Development Center

Department of Economics

My name is Tarek Buhagiar and I moved to Florida in 1990. I have been teaching at UCF since January 1998 and have loved every minute of it. UCF is a great institution that is constantly growing and changing. I have a Bachelor in Finance, a Master in Economics and a Graduate Certificate in Statistics/Data Mining. […]

Richard Hofler is Professor of Economics at the University of Central Florida. His major research fields are econometrics and health economics. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Hofler has served as […]

My Teaching Philosophy I take teaching very seriously and for the most part, view teaching as important as research. I have high expectations of the students, which is generally something they haven’t encountered in their prior education.  I eschew grading on a curve, for I find a curve unpalatable inasmuch as any true curve, e.g., a […]

Department of Economics

Dr. Nora Underwood received her BA from George Washington University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis. She was employed as a lecturer in the economics department at UC Davis for nine years before joining the Department of Economics at UCF in 2003. She most often teaches principles of macroeconomics, environmental economics, and […]

Eric Schmidbauer is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Central Florida. He completed his Ph.D. from Indiana University in 2014 and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. His research interests include the economics of information, industrial organization and marketing. He principally teaches courses in microeconomics and game theory at […]