Dr. Parker specializes in the Chinese economy and Asian financial systems, and teaches comparative and international economics at UNR.  He came to UNR after receiving his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Washington in Seattle (his dissertation was entitled Efficiency and the Response to Reform in Chinese Urban Construction Enterprises: A Production Theory Approach).  He earned an M.A. from the UW in 1987, and worked as an economic forecaster for GTE, prior to going off to China for a year and then returning to graduate school.  He was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1998, and promoted to full professor in 2004.  He is a past co-editor of the China Economic Review.  His courses, publications and presentations are listed on his main website.

He has experience teaching economics in China at the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade (1989), the Johns Hopkins University - Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies (1990, 1993-94), and in Sichuan for for the University Study Abroad Consortium (1998, 2006).  (He also taught for USAC in Bilbao, Spain in 2008.)  He has been a guest lecturer at Qingdao Ocean University (1994).
 

As an undergraduate majoring in systems analysis at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he received his Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.) degree in 1983 with a minor in economics, Dr. Parker was president of Omicron Delta Epsilon's Mu Chapter of Texas as well as the local chapter of Alpha Iota Delta, the honor society in decision sciences.  He founded the economics club at UTA, which later became a chapter of the National Association of Business Economists.  He helped to start a fund for an annual scholarship for the outstanding economics student, and he helped to build a strong and active student organization. For his work in ODE, he was awarded the first annual Dean's Award for Outstanding Service from his college.