peter leeson, Ph.D. (Chair)

Dr. Peter Leeson is the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law, and BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, at George Mason University. Formerly, he was Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Visiting Fellow in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University, and F.A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics. Leeson is North American Editor of Public Choice and author of the award-winning The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (Princeton University Press), Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think (Cambridge University Press), and WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird (Stanford University Press). Visit his website at PeterLeeson.com

Christopher Coyne, Ph.D

Dr. Christopher Coyne is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and the Associate Director of the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center. He serves as Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Economics at GMU. He also serves as the Co-Editor of The Review of Austrian Economics, the Co-Editor of The Independent Review, the Co-Editor of Advances in Austrian Economics, and the Book Review Editor of Public Choice.

Anthony Gill, Ph.D.

Dr. Anthony Gill, Ph.D. UCLA; B.A. Marquette, is Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, a Distinguished Research Scholar at Baylor University’s Institute for the Study of Religion, and former research associate at the Religious Freedom Project (Georgetown’s Berkeley Center for Religion, Peace, & World Affairs).  He is the author of Rendering Unto Caesar (Chicago) and The Political Origins of Religious Liberty (Cambridge).  The latter book won the American Sociological Association’s Section on Religion’s Distinguished Book Award.  Prof. Gill’s current research agenda examines government regulation of religious property rights, the economic consequences of religious liberty, and how local social norms govern behavior.  He teaches courses in political economy, public choice, and religion & politics, earned the UW’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1999, and is the creator and host of the weekly podcast series Research on Religion.  Tony also enjoys boxing, horseback riding, hiking, scuba diving, camping with his family, fantasy football, billiards, target shooting, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and all things cowboy. His favorite color is royal blue and will consider you a friend forever if you buy him pizza and whiskey.

James Harrigan, Ph.D.

Dr. James R. Harrigan is CEO of FreedomTrust. Dr. Harrigan taught at the collegiate level for a number of years, became Dean of the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani, and later served as Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also Senior Research Fellow. He has written extensively for the popular press, with articles appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, Forbes, Investor's Business Daily, and a host of other outlets. His current work focuses on political economy, public policy, and political philosophy.

Peter Martin Jaworski, Ph.D.

Dr. Peter Martin Jaworski is an Assistant Teaching Professor teaching business ethics and GMRC Adviser on Ethics and Entrepreneurship. He is a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and a Director of the Institute for Liberal Studies. He has also been a Visiting Research Professor at Brown University. Peter's academic work has been published or is forthcoming in several journals including Ethics, the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, the Journal of Business Ethics, and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. Along with Jason Brennan, Peter is the author of Markets without Limits: Moral Virtues and Commercial Interests published in 2015. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgetown, Peter was a visitor in the Philosophy department at the College of Wooster, and was an instructor in Philosophy at Bowling Green State University. Peter's research focuses on the moral limits of markets (including, esp., markets in bone marrow, blood, and kidneys), property rights, and the morality of markets. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bowling Green State University (2012), an M.Sc. in Philosophy & Public Policy from the London School of Economics (2005), an MA in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo (2004) and a BA(H) in Philosophy from Queens' University (2002).

Geri Mason, Ph.D.

Dr. Geri Mason is Associate Professor of Economics at Seattle Pacific University. Dr. Mason’s research focuses on rural credit markets, the effectiveness of non-government organizations (see publications in World Development and Voluntas), and anti-poverty solutions in less developed economies. She is an active member of the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) working group on Poverty, a Challenge for Management Education; she is a member of the Christian Development Economists group. Her particular regional focus is China, with interest in the Southeast Asia region as well. Dr. Mason graduated with honors from Whitworth University; she earned her MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She speaks Mandarin and Italian, loves people, and loves all good food. 

Phillip Magness, Ph.D.

Dr. Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian, a leading expert on black colonization during the Civil War era. His other works have explored the economic history of the United States. He also researches the history and political economy of higher education and the American university system. Magness’ research has appeared in multiple scholarly and popular venues, including the Journal of the Early Republic, the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Slavery & Abolition, Constitutional Political Economy, the Journal of Business Ethics, and Liberal Education.

His popular press writings have appeared in Newsweek, Britannica.com, the History News Network, and the New York Times. He has fact-checked Politifact, discussed the economics of higher education on NPR’s Marketplace, and presented on Black Abolitionism for C-Span’s American History TV. Magness holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He obtained his MPP and Ph.D. from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, specializing in policy history. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Berry College, and has previously taught Public Policy at George Mason University and American University.

Benjamin Powell, Ph.D.

Dr. Benjamin Powell is the Director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University where he also serves as a professor of economics in the Rawls College of Business. He is also a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute and the North American Editor of the Review of Austrian Economics. Prior to joining Texas Tech, he was an Associate Professor of Economics at Suffolk University and an Assistant Professor of Economics at San José State University and the Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation at the Independent Institute. He became interested in economics through the writings of Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and Murray Rothbard. He earned his Ph.D. from George Mason University in 2003 where he studied Austrian Economics and Public Choice Theory.

Razeen Sally, Ph.D.

Dr. Razeen Sally is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and co-Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), a international economic policy think tank based in Brussels. He is also Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, and Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies, the main economic think tank in his native Sri Lanka. He is on the Global Agenda Council for Competitiveness of the World Economic Forum, and was awarded the Hayek Medal by the Hayek Society in Germany in 2011. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He was on the faculty of the London School of Economics for eighteen years, where he also received his PhD.

Dr. Sally is Senior Research Associate at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Institut D’Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, a Visiting Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, and Director, Trade Policy, at the Commonwealth Business Council in London. He is on the Academic Advisory Council of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, and on the Advisory Board of the Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies in Washington DC.

Dr. Sally’s research focuses on trade policy in Asia, the WTO and preferential trade agreements. He has also written on the intellectual history of political economy, especially the theory of commercial policy. He lectures and consults for governments, business and international organizations, and comments regularly on international economic policy issues in the media.

Alex Tabarrok, Ph.D.

Dr. Alex Tabarrok is professor of economics at George Mason University. He specializes in patent-system reform, the effectiveness of bounty hunters compared to the police, how judicial elections bias judges, and how local poverty rates impact trial decisions by juries. He also examines methods for increasing the supply of human organs for transplant, the regulation of pharmaceuticals by the FDA, and voting systems. Tabarrok is the coauthor, with Mercatus colleague Tyler Cowen, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution and cofounder of the online educational platform Marginal Revolution University. He is the coauthor of Modern Principles of Economics, and author of the recent e-book Launching the Innovation Renaissance. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other prestigious publications. Tabarrok received his PhD in economics from George Mason University. For a current list of publications, view Alex's personal website.

James Stacey Taylor, Ph.D.

Dr. James Stacey Taylor is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at The College of New Jersey. Branded a heretic by the London Times for his arguments in favor of legalizing markets in human organs in his book Stakes and Kidneys: Why markets in human organs are morally imperative (Ashgate, 2005), he is also the author of Practical Autonomy and Bioethics (Routledge, 2009), and Death, Posthumous Harm, and Bioethics (Routledge, 2012). He is the editor of Personal Autonomy: New essays (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Death: Metaphysics and Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2013). He is currently working on a book on the ethics of using compensated donation to procure blood and blood products.

In addition to his academic writing he has authored numerous opinion editorials on bioethical issues which have appeared in publications including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, and USA Today. (One of his award-winning opinion pieces for the Los Angeles Times was credited with influencing the ruling of the 6th District Court circuit that led to the legalization of payment for bone marrow.) He is an occasional contributor to National Public Radio and has been quoted in The New York Times.