Scott Miller

Scott C. Miller is an assistant professor of business administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, director of the Democracy and Capitalism Lab at the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy, and faculty fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs. After receiving his PhD in Economic History at UVA, Miller completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the International Center for Finance at the Yale School of Management. He has written more than 40 case studies on financial crises and economic development, published numerous peer-reviewed articles, and is the author/editor of Can Democracy and Capitalism be Reconciled (with Sidney M. Milkis, Oxford University Press) and the forthcoming Minera Rising!: The Origins of American Economic Power (University of Chicago Press, Spring 2027).

Miller has received many awards and fellowships, including the Georges Gallais-Hamonno Research Prize in Historical Finance from the French Finance Association, Economic History Fellowship at the International Center for Jefferson Studies, the James C. Rees Entrepreneurship Fellowship at The Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, the Bankard Fund for Political Economy Predoctoral Fellowship, and the John Carter Brown Library Fellowship at Brown University. 

As an economic historian, Miller examines the development of modern economic systems, particularly during periods of instability and volatility. In two different veins of research, Miller uses economic crises as a lens to isolate mechanisms of change in the early American Republic and 1840s Europe, with broad corollaries for modern systems in the first and second stages of economic development. Miller's work frames the early American republic as a resource-rich, capital- and labor-poor developing economy, which was reliant on and subject to global export markets dominated by global hegemons such as Great Britain. Likewise, 1840s Europe represents a system of interconnected economies at the brink of breakout industrialization. While not perfect stand-ins for 21st century development stories, early America and 1840s Europe serve as excellent case studies for the symbiotic relationship between institutions, factor endowments, political systems, cultural values, and contingent events in the development process.

Miller received a BA from Vanguard University in 2007, MA in American History from George Mason University in 2013, and an MA and PhD in Economic History from the University of Virginia in 2015 and 2018, respectively.