Scott Deacle teaches courses in finance, economics, econometrics, and research methods. He also serves as Business and Economics Department Chair and advises the Ursinus College student-managed investment fund. Deacle’s research focuses on financial institutions, with past studies covering the Federal Home Loan Banks, bank ownership of real estate, the U.S. thrift industry, and pre-Civil War Illinois banks. Current projects examine the effects of the Dodd-Frank Act on community banks and, in a departure from the focus on financial institutions, whether baseball players’ performances fluctuate based on where they are in their contract cycles. 

Deacle earned a bachelors degree in history from The College of William and Mary and then worked as a reporter at newspapers in Scranton, Pa., Pittsburgh, Danville, Va., and Wake Forest, N.C. He rarely wrote about business or economics but did enjoy reading The Wall Street Journal. After six years in newspapers, Deacle entered graduate school at Temple University, where he earned his PhD in economics.

While a graduate student at Temple, he co-authored a graduate-level textbook on the design of economic mechanisms with Professor Dimitrios Diamantaras and three other graduate students. The textbook is called “A Toolbox for Mechanism Design” (Palgrave, 2011).