Rate My Professor Shawn Kantor

Shawn Kantor is the L. Charles Hilton Jr. Distinguished Professor of Economic Prosperity and Individual Opportunity in the Department of Economics at Florida State University, where he also serves as Executive Director of the L. Charles Hilton Jr. Center for the Study of Economic Prosperity and Individual Opportunity. He earned a Ph.D. in Social Science from the California Institute of Technology in 1991 and a B.A. in Economics and History from the University of Rochester in 1987. Prior to joining Florida State University in 2015, Kantor was a professor of economics at the University of Arizona from 1990 to 2004, a founding professor of economics at the University of California, Merced from 2004 to 2012, and head of the Department of Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2012 to 2015.

Kantor's research focuses on the economics of innovation, urban and regional economics, U.S. economic history, political economy, and public economics. His current research examines the determinants of regional economic growth, including the role of knowledge spillovers from public investments such as those during the U.S. space race. Key publications include 'The Dynamics of Relief Spending and the Private Urban Labor Market During the New Deal' in the Journal of Economic History (2010), which received the Arthur H. Cole Prize for the outstanding article in the journal. He co-authored the book A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation (University of Chicago Press, 2000) with Price Fishback, awarded a TIAA Certificate of Excellence. In 2026, Kantor and Alexander Whalley published in the American Economic Review, providing new insights into limited economic spillovers from federal R&D spending in the space race era. A prize-winning author and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research since 1997, he has held endowed positions such as the County Bank Chair in Economics and edited volumes of Research in Economic History.