Tyler Cowen

Tyler Cowen
Born	(1962-01-21) January 21, 1962
Nationality	American
Field	Cultural economics
School or tradition	Neoclassical economics
Influences	Chicago School Thomas Schelling Carl Menger

Tyler Cowen (/ˈkaʊ.ən/; born January 21, 1962) is an American economist, academic, and writer. He occupies the Holbert C. Harris Chair of economics, as a professor at George Mason University, and is co-author, with Alex Tabarrok, of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. Cowen and Tabarrok have also ventured into online education by starting Marginal Revolution University. He currently writes the "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times. He also writes for such publications as The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, and the Wilson Quarterly. Cowen also serves as general director of George Mason's Mercatus Center, a university research center that focuses on the market economy. In February 2011, Cowen received a nomination as one of the most influential economists in the last decade in a survey by The Economist. He was ranked #72 among the "Top 100 Global Thinkers" in 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine "for finding markets in everything."

Education and personal life

Cowen was born in Bergen County, New Jersey on January 21, 1962. At the age of 15, he became the youngest ever New Jersey state chess champion. He graduated from George Mason University with a bachelor of science degree in economics in 1983 and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987 with his thesis titled Essays in the theory of welfare economics. At Harvard, he was mentored by game theorist Thomas Schelling, the 2005 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is married to Natasha Cowen, a lawyer.

Writings

Culture

The Los Angeles Times has described Cowen as "a man who can talk about Haitian voodoo flags, Iranian cinema, Hong Kong cuisine, Abstract Expressionism, Zairian music and Mexican folk art with seemingly equal facility". One of Cowen's primary research interests is the economics of culture. He has written books on fame (What Price Fame?), art (In Praise of Commercial Culture), and cultural trade (Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World's Cultures). In Markets and Cultural Voices, he relays how globalization is changing the world of three Mexican amate painters. Cowen argues that free markets change culture for the better, allowing them to evolve into something more people want. Other books include Public Goods and Market Failures, The Theory of Market Failure, Explorations in the New Monetary Economics, Risk and Business Cycles, Economic Welfare, and New Theories of Market Failure.

Recent books

Cowen followed the controversial success of his 2011 work, The Great Stagnation with An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies "taking on food with equally provocative ideas."

The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All The Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better is a short, 15,000-word take on the United States' recent economic trajectory released in January 2011. Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World was released in July 2009 (and rereleased in 2010 with the new title The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy) and received favorable reviews from critics including Matthew Yglesias and Tim Harford.

In 2013 he published Average is Over on the future of modern economies.

New York Times columns

Cowen's New York Times columns cover a wide range of issues, including the 2008 financial crisis, "Too Few Regulations? No, Just Ineffective Ones".

Dining guide

His dining guide for the D.C. area, "Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide", was reprinted in the Food section of the Washington Post.

Political philosophy

Cowen has written papers in political philosophy and ethics: for example, he co-wrote a paper with the philosopher Derek Parfit, arguing against the social discount rate. A recent paper has argued that the epistemic problem fails to refute consequentialist forms of argument. Cowen has been described as a "libertarian bargainer", someone of moderate libertarian ideals who can influence practical policy making. In a 2007 article entitled "The Paradox of Libertarianism," Cowen argued that libertarians "should embrace a world with growing wealth, growing positive liberty, and yes, growing government. We don’t have to favor the growth in government per se, but we do need to recognize that sometimes it is a package deal". His argument was subsequently criticized by Bryan Caplan, Justin Raimondo, Christopher Westley, Edward Stringham, and Doug MacKenzie. Cowen recognizes that stateless societies exist, but questions whether they are viable in the long run. Economist Edward Stringham has criticized Cowen on this point, arguing Zomia has existed as a state-less society for centuries.

Cowen endorsed bailouts in a March 2, 2009 column in the New York Times. He was a supporter of the Iraq War.

In 2012, David Brooks called Cowen one of the most influential bloggers on the right, writing that he is among those who "start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way."

In an August 2014 blog post, Cowen wrote, "Just to summarize, I generally favor much more immigration but not open borders, I am a liberal on most but not all social issues, and I am market-oriented on economic issues. On most current foreign policy issues I am genuinely agnostic as to what exactly we should do but skeptical that we are doing the right thing at the moment. I don’t like voting for either party or for third parties."

Attack

On March 26, 2014, Cowen was attacked whilst teaching "Law and Literature" in his classroom by Jonathan Pendleton, who tried to perform a "citizen's arrest" of the professor and then pepper sprayed him. A bystander intervened and Pendelton was detained and arrested shortly after by police. Cowen and his students reportedly suffered no lasting injuries. Pendelton reportedly believed that Cowen had "controlled his mind at a distance" and sexually harassed him.

Publications

Books

• (Wikipedia page)
• With Alex Tabarrok:
• (Wikipedia page)

Select articles

• "The Lack of Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth"- NYTimes, June 14, 2014

External links

• Cowen's bio at the Mercatus Center
• Tyler Cowen's Web Page at GMU
• Marginal Revolution
• Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• China Is Big Trouble for the U.S. Balance of Trade, Right? Well, Not So Fast
• What's wrong with cute-o-nomics?
• Review of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
• New York Books Review of Discover Your Inner Economist
• Tyler Cowen at Goodreads