Malone teaches Micro and Macroeconomics, International Economics, American Economic History, and Classical Political Economy. In 2001 he was selected as a Carnegie Scholar by the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). At Hartwick, he became the youngest recipient of the Margaret Bunn Award for Outstanding Teaching in 1993. The annual award is presented to a member of the faculty judged by students who graduated five years earlier as the most outstanding teacher at the college.
Malone’s second book, Opening the West: Federal Internal Improvements Before 1860 (Greenwood, 1998), recasts our understanding of the development of the American frontier before the Civil War, and has generated interest among economic historians and historians of the early American Republic. His argument, supported by a study of transportation appropriations from 1800 to 1860, demonstrates that the federal government constructed roads and canals and improved rivers and harbors before settlers "conquered the West."
A third book, Learning Interdependence, was recently completed with Hartwick colleagues David Bachner and Mary Snider, and will be published by the University of South Carolina in Spring, 2001. This interdisciplinary work documents the educational value of a month-long international study-abroad program that the authors planned and conducted for first-year college students under a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.
Malone’s research interests in economics concentrate on government policies and economic development from the seventeenth century to the present. He has authored articles and book reviews on topics that range from the origins of match-making in the United States to the problem of broadband internet access in rural America. Before graduate school Malone worked for the New York State Assembly as a Senior Research Associate for legislation on economic development. In recent years he has traveled and lived in western and eastern Europe and worked to assist eastern European entrepreneurs in forming small businesses. He is a Board Member of the Economic and Business Historical Society, a national organization of economic and business historians, and in 2000/01 he served as President of the Society.