Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Benjamin Powell

The bio below comes from a published article and may now be dated.

Benjamin Powell

Benjamin Powell is the executive director of the Free Market Institute and a professor of economics in the Jerry S. Rawls College of Business Administration at Texas Tech University. He is a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute, and the secretary-treasurer of the Southern Economic Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He earned his B.S. in economics and finance from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He is the author of Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press 2014), co-author of Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World (Regnery 2019) and Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge 2020), and editor or co-editor of four other books including The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy (Oxford University Press 2015). He is author of more than 75 scholarly articles and policy studies. Prof. Powell’s research findings have been reported in hundreds of popular press outlets including The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He also writes frequently for the popular press. His popular writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, New York Post, The Dallas Morning News and elsewhere. He has appeared on Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, Showtime, CNBC, and he was a regular guest commentator on Fox Business Network’s Freedom Watch and Stossel. His email address is benjamin.powell@​ttu.edu.