About

Dennis Epple is the Thomas Lord University Professor of Economics at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. His professional focus includes research in economics, with an emphasis on the intersection of business, technology, and analytics. Epple's work is guided by the strategic vision of building The Intelligent Future℠, reflecting a data-informed, human-driven approach to innovation and problem solving for the future of business education. As a faculty member, he contributes to the academic environment through his expertise in economics, supporting the school's mission to lead at the intersection of business, technology, and analytics.

Research topics

• Economics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Law
• Mathematical economics
• Psychology
• Demographic economics
• Mathematics education
• Business
• Economic growth
• Public economics

Selected publications

• The Political Economy of School Finance Systems With Endogenous State and Local Tax Policies

  International Economic Review · 2025-03-20

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Beginning in the 1970s, many state courts declared the widespread inequality in education spending across schools a violation of their state's constitution. Funding systems then emerged providing differing approaches to state and local support of education. We develop a theoretical framework and characterize outcomes under alternative systems. Our framework has voting over policies in both state and local elections. A counterpart computational model compares equilibrium outcomes under the alternative school finance systems and examines across state differences in expenditures. The model predicts that voters prefer systems with mixed state and local finance with designs mirroring those observed in practice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A sharp characterization of equilibria in a tournament with performance and distinction standards

  Economic Theory Bulletin · 2025-01-06

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

• The Political Economy of School Finance Systems with Endogenous State and Local Tax Policies

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-11-01

  reportOpen access

  Beginning in the 1970's, many state courts declared the widespread inequality in education spending across schools to violate their state's constitution.Funding systems then emerged providing differing approaches to state and local support of education.We develop a theoretical framework and characterize outcomes under alternative systems.Our framework is distinctive in having voting over policies in both state and local elections.We also develop a calibrated computational model to compare equilibrium outcomes under the alternative school finance systems and to examine across state differences in expenditures.The model predicts that voters prefer systems with mixed state and local finance with designs mirroring those observed in practice.

  PublisherDOI

• A Simple Characterization of Equilibria in a Tournament with Performance and Distinction Standards

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Political Economy of School Finance Systems with Endogenous State and Local Tax Policies

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Forest Fires: Why the Large Year-to-Year Variation in Forests Burned?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Forest Fires: Why the Large Year-to-Year Variation in Forests Burned?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Forest Fires: Why The Large Year-to-Year Variation in Forests Burned?

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-09-01

  reportOpen access

  Quantifying factors giving rise to temporal variation in forest fires is important for advancing scientific understanding and improving fire prevention. We demonstrate that eighty percent of the large year-to-year variation in forest area burned in California can be accounted for by variation in temperature, precipitation, housing construction, electricity transmission, and ocean surface temperatures in the North Atlantic, North Pacific, and Equatorial Pacific. California is of particular interest because of its large acreage burned and proximity of fires to human populations. We believe our model is the first unified treatment of climatic factors and human activities that affect forest area burned.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The emergence of private high schools in India: The impact of public-private competition on public school students

  Journal of Public Economics · 2022 · 8 citations

  • Economics
  • Public economics
  • Business
  PublisherDOI

• Majority choice of taxation and redistribution in a federation

  Journal of Public Economics · 2022-12-05

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Modelling the U.S. Market for Higher Education and Evaluating Public Funding Policies: Theory and Estimation

  NSF · $548k · 2014–2018

• EITM: Collaborative Research on Equilibrium Models of Competition in the Market for Higher Education: Theory and Evidence

  NSF · $127k · 2004–2008

• Life Cycle Locational Choices, Voting, and Fiscal Federalism: Theory and Estimation

  NSF · $444k · 2010–2013

• Local Spillovers, Externalities and Sorting of Households by Race and Income in Locational Equilibrium

  NSF · $104k · 2001–2007

• Household Life Cycle Location Choices and the Dynamics of Metropolitan Communities

  NSF · $345k · 2006–2009

Frequent coauthors

• Holger Sieg

  143 shared

• Richard Romano

  121 shared

• Sinan Sarpça

  École Normale Supérieure de Lyon

  35 shared

• Melanie A. Zaber

  29 shared

• Stephen Calabrese

  University of Sussex

  25 shared

• Thomas Romer

  19 shared

• Darío Cestau

  14 shared

• Linda Argote

  Carnegie Mellon University

  13 shared

Education

• PhD Economics, Department of Economics

  Princeton University

  1975

• Master of Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

  Princeton University

  1971

• BS Aeronautical Engineering, Department of Aeronautical Engineering

  Purdue University

  1968