Independent Economics Researcher

Cole Phillips is an independent economic researcher based in Chicago, Illinois. His work focuses on labor market structure, industrial organization, and the institutional forces that shape market outcomes. He is the author of two working papers published under his independent research series. His first, Tariff Shocks and FUDflation, introduced a behavioral framework for understanding expectation-driven inflation and was presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland’s Economic Scholars Program in April 2025. His second, Concentration at the Top, examines how employer concentration in the H2A temporary agricultural visa program relates to patterns of agricultural production across U.S. states using original labor and commodity concentration metrics. In September 2026 he will begin a Masters in Economics at the University of Warwick.