Dustin Frye

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. My research spans urban economics, development economics, and economic history, with a focus on how public policy, infrastructure, and institutions shape economic development, health, and long-run spatial outcomes. Much of my work examines the economic effects of transportation networks such as highways and railroads, urban infrastructure including lead service lines and sanitation systems, and the long-run consequences of federal Indian policy for property rights, governance, and development on American Indian reservations.

A unifying feature of my research is original data construction and digitization. My work involves assembling new historical datasets from census microdata, land patents, infrastructure maps, mortality records, and administrative sources, often requiring extensive archival research and digitization of previously unused records. My research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and has been published in leading economics journals including the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics.

I received my Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder and my B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Montana. Prior to joining the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I was an Assistant Professor at Vassar College.