Prior to joining Virginia Tech, he has been a Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at Louisiana State University and a Program Director at the National Science Foundation. His research interests range from network theory to development economics. He studies how gender differences affect economic activity, as well as the origins of gender inequality. His work on networks focuses on the strategic formation of social and economic networks and how participation in multiple networks affects social outcomes. He is a research associate of DIW Berlin, GATE, University of Lyon-St. Etienne and the Lima School of Economics. He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Public Economic Theory and Studies in Microeconomics. 2020 Kuznets Prize of the Journal of Population Economics.