Ryan McDevitt

Ryan C. McDevitt is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, where he teaches the core Managerial Economics course.

Professor McDevitt received a B.A. from Williams College and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, both in economics. Before joining the faculty at Duke, he advised technology companies as an analyst in Morgan Stanley's Investment Banking Division and taught Competitive Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management and the Simon School of Business. Most recently, he worked as an economist in Amazon’s Prime Video and Music division while on leave from Fuqua in 2017.

Professor McDevitt's research applies methods from empirical industrial organization to study a broad range of issues. Within health care, he has examined how medical groups strategically choose physicians based on their gender, how providers balance the quality and quantity of their treatments, how hospitals manipulate patients’ discharges to maximize reimbursements, and how dialysis chains transfer their corporate strategies to the facilities they acquire. Outside of health care, he has conducted large-sample studies on various topics, including the response of firms to changes in their reputations, the correlation between a firm’s name choice and its quality, the economic benefits of broadband internet, the influence of legislators’ school ties on higher education funding, and the impact of social frictions on consumers' purchases. Several media outlets have profiled his work, including The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economist, and National Public Radio.