By James Gwartney and Robert Lawson with the assistance of Joshua Hall.
With contributions from Russell S. Sobel & Peter T. Leeson
AUTHORS
James Gwartney holds the Gus A. Stavros Eminent Scholar Chair at Florida State University, where he directs the Stavros Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Economic Education. He is a coauthor of Economics: Private and Public Choice (Cengage/South-Western Press), a widely used text on the principles of economics that is now in its twelfth edition. He is also a coauthor of an economics primer, Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know about Wealth and Prosperity (St. Martin’s Press, 2005). His publications have appeared in both professional journals and popular media such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He served as Chief Economist of the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress during 1999/2000. He was invited by the incoming Putin Administration in March 2000 to make presentations and have discussions with leading Russian economists concerning the future of the Russian economy. In 2004, he was the recipient of the Adam Smith Award of the Association of Private Enterprise Education for his contribution to the advancement of free-market ideals. He is the current President of the Southern Economic Association. His Ph.D. in economics is from the University of Washington.
Robert A. Lawson holds the Jerome M. Fullinwider Endowed Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom and is director of the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the Southern Methodist University (SMU) Cox School of Business. Prior to SMU, he taught at Auburn University, Capital University, and Shawnee State University. Professor Lawson has numerous professional publications in journals such as Public Choice, Cato Journal, Kyklos, Journal of Labor Research, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, and European Journal of Political Economy. He has served as president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society.
Joshua Hall is the Director of the Center for Free Enterprise and an Associate Professor of Economics at West Virginia University. Prior this position, he was the Elbert H. Neese, Jr. Professor of Economics at Beloit College and an economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. Dr. Hall has published in numerous policy studies and professional publications, his research having appeared in journals such as the Atlantic Economic Journal, Cato Journal, Journal of Economic Education, and Journal of Labor Research.
CONTRIBUTORS
Russell S. Sobel is Professor of Economics and holder of the James Clark Coffman Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies at West Virginia University. He has published over 75 books and articles, including a co-authored textbook on the principles of economics and a book on West Virginia’s policy reform entitled Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It. Dr. Sobel was the founding Director of the West Virginia University Entrepreneurship Center, and he serves on the advisory boards of five major professional and academic organizations. He has received numerous awards for both his teaching and research. His recent work has focused on FEMA reform, state-level economic freedom, and entrepreneurship.
Peter T. Leeson is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Previously, he was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and the F.A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics. Leeson is the author of nearly 40 academic journal articles, which have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, and Public Choice. He is an Associate Editor of the Review of Austrian Economics and an Adjunct Scholar of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. In 2007, Leeson won the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders Prize for his work on the effectiveness of private-property anarchy.