Ryan Safner

I am an Economist at the U.S. Copyright Office, conducting research on economic implications of copyright-relevant issues (such as generative AI).

Previously, I was Associate Professor of Economics at Hood College, where I taught 17 different economics courses over the years. I am a firm believer of providing public goods & promoting open source materials, so you can find all course materials on my custom course websites.

My personal research agenda explores the political economy of innovation, technological growth, and intellectual property using the tools of new institutional economics, public choice, and market process economics. I blog about these issues in a non-technical way at Increasing Returns.

I am a passionate user of R for data analysis, and Quarto and GitHub for writing reproducible research, using version control, and managing my workflow. I blog here about using these tools in my research & teaching as well as learning how to use new tools and software.

Disclaimer: All opinions expressed on this website are my own and do not represent the views or policies of the U.S. Copyright Office or any other institution.