SFU economics professor Doug Allen receives 2018 FASS Cormack Teaching Award

It is with pleasure that we congratulate SFU Economics professor Doug Allen on being awarded the 2018 FASS Cormack Teaching Award.

Each year, the FASS Dean presents up to four Cormack Teaching awards. This award recognizes the passion that faculty bring to the classroom, innovative teaching techniques, and the difference faculty make to their students’ education.

After obtaining his BA and MA in economics at Simon Fraser University, Professor Allen completed his PhD at the University of Washington before returning to teach at SFU in 1990. Since then, he has had an illustrious teaching career bolstered by numerous teaching awards, including the SFU Dean’s Silver Medal for Outstanding Academic Service in 2000 and the SFU Excellence in Teaching Award in 2009.

As the long-running instructor for the introductory economics course, ECON 103: Principles of Microeconomics, Professor Allen serves as the face of the economics department to many students. His role also means that he teaches approximately 600 students a year, which is twice as many as most other faculty in the department.

Professor Allen’s unique approach to teaching emphasizes practical applications of economics, and the “economic way of thinking” applied in ways that explain interesting real world problems and phenomena. His teaching often draws examples from history, literature, and contemporary social issues to provide a real-world application and perspective to economics.

Professor Allen’s research focuses on the economics of transaction costs and property rights, and he has applied this methodology to understanding institutions like marriage and divorce, welfare, the church, farm organization, homesteading, and the military. His 2011 book, The Institutional Revolution, won the 2014 Douglass C. North Prize.

He teaches microeconomic theory, the economics of the family, and law and economics.

Congratulations, Professor Allen!