Dr. Leah Greden Mathews

Associate Professor of Economics.  Dr. Leah Greden Mathews grew up in the small town of Northfield, Minnesota, where the motto is "Cows, Colleges, and Contentment."  The cows and colleges weren't enough to keep her there past high school, when she enrolled at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to get a taste to city life. She earned degrees in Economics, French, and International Affairs from Marquette in 1991.

Dr. Mathews earned her PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota and started teaching at the University of North Carolina at Asheville in 1997, though not in that order.  At UNCA she teaches principles of microeconomics, land economics, natural resource economics and the senior research seminar.

Dr. Mathews' research focuses on the valuation of those things that you can't buy on supermarket shelves, like environmental quality, and the links between economics and policy.  Her previous research includes projects estimating the costs of financing farmland preservation in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, valuing water quality improvements in the Minnesota River, and the value that recreators have for maintaining higher water levels in Fontana Lake.  She also helped to estimate the value of scenic quality to Blue Ridge Parkway visitors.

Dr. Mathews' current research incorporates both her interest in policy relevant research and her rural heritage.  The Farmland Values Project is gathering information about the values that communities in Western North Carolina have for farmland, with particular attention to those that aren't typically exchanged in markets, including scenic beauty and cultural heritage.

Dr. Mathews is a marathon runner who spends much of her leisure time running on the trails of the NC Arboretum and Bent Creek. She lives in Candler with her husband, Brian, and their incredible mutt, Jake.