It all looks typical at first. Daniel Rees, Professor of Economics, hurries around an obstacle-strewn office in his biking gear, shuffling through piles of journal articles and student papers which smother his desk. This is not a particularly unusual scene around campus until one considers it is late December; the semester has been out for more than a week, the library is closed, and campus is a ghost town. One would think it the least favorable time for a professor to be coordinating research. Not Rees. He thrives on being unorthodox, perhaps intentionally challenging conventional wisdom. "There's definitely something to that. When working on topics like mine, there aren't a lot of places to publish. My articles aren't necessarily criminology or sociology. Sometimes it is frustrating. I've got something to prove: that it is economics, and it is relevant." What about research in traditional economic subjects, like inflation, trade agreements, or unemployment? "No. No," he says emphatically. "It bores the heck out of me."

When asked about the development of his own interest in economics, Rees says, "My father never explicitly encouraged me to pursue a career as an economist." Rees grew up in Chicago, then New Jersey, where his father was an economics professor at Princeton University. Rees took his first economics class at Oberlin College, mainly out of curiosity. He was instantly hooked and pursued studies as a labor economist, obtaining a PhD from Cornell University before landing a position at CU Denver in 1993. When it came to economics, Rees was a natural. "Maybe it's in my genes," he says.

It might take a genetic predisposition to look at certain topics through an economists' eyes. Take, for example, risk. Risk is a primary consideration of the economist. What is the tradeoff between risk and reward? What is the probability of a particular event occurring? Now move away from immediate financial considerations such as consumption and taxation, and apply the idea of risk to measurable individual behavior. Rees became curious about the relationship between birth order and risky behavior among adolescents. While psychologists have long been interested in the connection between birth order and behavior, Rees acknowledges, "This is not something economists have looked at until very recently." Rees and his coauthors (including Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Laura Argys) found that middle-born and last-born children are more likely to engage in risky behavior than firstborns.

Rees also investigated the relationship between migraine headaches and educational attainment. He found that migraine sufferers tend to perform poorly in high school and are less likely to go to college. Rees acknowledges that this result is not, "setting the economics world on fire." But he points out that educational attainment affects earnings and that migraine headaches could have a direct effect on workplace productivity. He notes, perhaps cheekily, "I've never had more headaches than when working on that migraine project."

"Some researchers are focused on documenting simple associations," says Rees. "I'm interested in causality... the actual effect of a policy or law on behavior." Motivated by contemporary social issues, he says, "I love working on the edges, where fields overlap." One of the most interesting elements of Rees' research is its multidisciplinary scope. "Economists have a different take on these issues than psychologists, sociologists, or public health researchers," Rees points out. Yet his topics are both contemporary and important. One article that recently appeared in the Journal of Law and Economics documents the effects of the legalizing medical marijuana. Rees and co-authors found that legalization led to a sharp reduction in traffic fatalities involving alcohol as well as a reduction in alcohol consumption among young adults. These results have caused some controversy, but, according to Rees "may have nudged the conversation surrounding legalization forward."

Rees himself admits, "It's very hard for me… to stay on the same subject." Recently, he and CU Denver Professor Hani Mansour embarked upon a new research project that analyzed data from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Professor Mansour described their goal as, "[estimating] the relationship between exposure to armed conflict and birth weight. Neither of us had worked on this topic before, but our results turned out to be very interesting. We [found] that exposure to armed conflict in the first trimester of pregnancy increases the probability of having a low birth-weight-infant." Interest in the human toll of armed conflict also inspired Rees to examine how best to measure insurgent activity in the Philippines, Questions like these can be difficult to answer, but Rees is undaunted; taking extra time to analyze details, evaluate and re-evaluate data, he reaches conclusions that are of interest to the economist, the politician and the layperson. His passion is evident when he lays his hand on one of his articles and says, "I want the results to be understood."

Rees is currently working on yet another potentially controversial project. He and D. Mark Anderson, a professor at Montana State University, are examining the effect of combat exposure on violent crime using data from Colorado Springs and other Front Range communities. Their results suggest that combat units that had not been deployed to Iraq contribute to violent crime in the form of murders, rapes, and assaults. In contrast, previously deployed combat units do not appear to contribute to violent crime. This pattern of results defies conventional wisdom about the effects on combat on the psychology of returning servicemen.

Rees does much of his research with younger colleagues. Although he laughs off the label, "mentor" he's clearly had an impact. Mansour, who joined the department in 2009, is among those who will testify to Rees' engagement, "Daniel has been a wonderful colleague and a mentor. His enthusiasm for research is contagious… and is one of the most engaging economists I've worked with. Most importantly, he is very generous with his time … this type of support improved the quality of my articles substantially and helped advance my career in its early stages." Rees is known for taking time for students as well as his colleagues. "He was my first academic mentor," says University of Sydney's Economics Professor Kevin Schnepel. Schnepel was a student of Rees' from 2005 to 2007, but Rees was offering him guidance even before his acceptance into the economics graduate program. Schnepel explains, "Early in ‘05, I was working as a CPA downtown and decided stop by the CU Denver Economics Department to get information. I knocked on Dan's door and asked if I could speak with him for a few minutes about the Masters program. We ended up talking for over an hour."

Rees and Schnepel's academic relationship led to joint research of a typically unorthodox variety. In 2009, Rees and Schnepel co-authored an article that appeared in the Journal of Sports Economics titled, "College Football Games and Crime." They found that violent crime went up on game days, and that this increase was especially pronounced in the event of an upset. Says Schnepel of the experience researching with Rees, "He had a huge influence on my research and career, and has also become a great friend ... [he] taught me how to become an academic researcher. His enthusiasm for teaching and research inspired me to pursue a PhD I will always look back on my experience with Dan Rees for inspiration."

Rees's work, not surprisingly, has received some attention from the media. For instance, in an article titled, "Does High School Determine the Rest of Your Life?" Time magazine cited research he did with Jeffrey Zax, a professor at CU Boulder that looked at the connection between IQ and earnings. The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Chicago Tribune all mentioned Rees' research on the consequences of legalizing medical marijuana. So it seems that if Rees' research is breaking paradigms, there is a market for his fresh approach.

Dennis Mont'Ros is a senior studying Creative Writing at CU Denver.