Professor (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1981). Born in Norway and raised in Indiana, Professor Ramstad came to URI in 1982 after five years of teaching at San Francisco State and UC Davis. He has been teaching the history of economic thought courses since his arrival here, and began teaching a course in the economics of sports in 1998.  Professor Ramstad’s research has focused primarily on topics related to the theories of the institutional economists, John R. Commons and Thorstein Veblen. He has served as president of the Association for Institutional Thought (1993-94) and the Association for Evolutionary Economics (2000); both are international organizations established to support scholarly activity in the area of institutional economics.  Professor Ramstad served as co-sponsor of the Fall 2005 Honors Colloquium, “Contemporary Sport: Healthy Pursuit or Obsession?”   He was Department Chair from 2000 - 2007.