Professor McDevitt received a B.A. from Williams College and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, both in economics. Before joining the faculty at Duke, he worked as an analyst in Morgan Stanley's Investment Banking Division and taught Competitive Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management and the Simon School of Business. Professor McDevitt’s research focuses primarily on the field of empirical industrial organization. He has conducted large-sample studies on various topics, including firms’ responses to changes in their reputations and the correlation between a firm’s name choice and its quality. In a separate line of research, Professor McDevitt and his co-authors have estimated structural models of firms' decisions to differentiate in health care and venture capital.