Economics

Benjamin Powell

MA Economics '02 and PhD Economics '03

Benjamin Powell is the Executive Director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University, where he is a Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business. He is a Senior Fellow with The Independent Institute, and is the secretary-treasurer of the Southern Economic Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Mason.

Benjamin is the author of Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, co-author of Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World, and editor or co-editor of four other books. He has written more than 75 scholarly articles and policy studies, and his research findings have been reported in hundreds of popular press outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. His popular writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, New York Post, the Dallas Morning News and many other outlets. He has appeared on radio and television including on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, Showtime, and CNBC, and he was a regular guest commentator on Fox Business's Freedom Watch and Stossel shows.