His dissertation is entitled “Growing an Industrial Cluster?: Movie Production Incentives and the Georgia Film Industry.” His most recent publication is “Are Central Cities More Creative? The Intrametropolitan Geography of Creative Industries,” with Cathy Yang Liu, published in the Journal of Urban Affairs in December 2012. He is currently working on inequality and economic mobility in the creative economy. Most recently he was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Planning at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, and since 1987 he has taught public policy, urban planning, urban politics and American government at several institutions including Georgia State University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Temple University.