Faculty Research Day

John Garen is the BB&T Professor of Economics in the Gatton College of Business and Economics at the University of Kentucky and is the founding director and an affiliate of the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise. He has been a member of the Gatton faculty since 1985. Dr. Garen received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1982 and has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago, a Visiting Scholar at the Mercatus Center, at National Sun Yat-Sen University, and at National Taiwan Normal University, and is a member of the Mercatus Center’s Faculty Network and of the Board of Scholars for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions. From 2005-2009 he served as Department Chair and during 2004-2005 he was Co-Director of the Gatton College’s Center for Business and Economic Research. Dr. Garen’s interests have focused on the economics of organizations, labor and human resource economics, and the role of government in society. He has conducted research on a wide variety of economic issues, leading to over thirty-five publications in many of the foremost academic journals, as well as numerous reports and manuscripts. Based on this experience, Dr. Garen has generated a flow of opinion columns, media work, and presentations to the public on the economy and economic issues, and on the importance of economics to good public policy.

Jeff Payne is the KPMG Professor in the Von Allmen School of Accountancy. Professor Payne joined the University of Kentucky in 2004. Previous he worked at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Mississippi after receiving a PhD in Accounting from the University of Florida. He also holds a BS in Accounting from the University of Tulsa and a MBA from the University of Arkansas. Professor Payne is a CPA. Prior to his doctoral studies, he had extensive work experience in public accounting and industry.
Professor Payne has published research in a variety of accounting journals including The Accounting Review, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Journal of Accounting, Auditing, and Finance, and many others. His research focuses on financial accounting and auditing topics, including earnings management, forecasting by analysts, and the auditing market. He currently teaches three graduate courses in accounting, Fraud examination, IT Auditing, and Advanced Auditing.

Joseph Benitez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Management and Policy in the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky. He is a health economist and health services researcher interested in the role of public policy and health care reform on addressing needs of the medically underserved. He studies Medicaid policy and Medicaid program design with a special interest in the role of Medicaid as a safety net program and understanding the policy inputs that influence Medicaid performance. He has been a faculty member at the University of Kentucky since 2018, and was on the faculty at the University of Louisville from 2015-2018. He received his PhD in Health Policy from the University of Illinois Chicago, his MPH from the University of Kentucky, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia.

Antonios M. Koumpias is currently an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Georgia State University in 2017, holds a Master's in Economics from Duke University and a Bachelor's in Economics from the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Antonios' research focuses on public and health economics. His recent work examines the effect of mass media campaigns in Pakistan on taxpayer attitudes towards tax compliance and the impact of compliance reminders on the payments of overdue income tax liabilities in Greece. In health economics, he studies how publicly provided health insurance, Medicaid and Medicare, affects patient outcomes and health expenditures.