About

Charles K. Rowley

My name is Dr. Charles K. Rowley. I am President and General Director of  The Locke Institute, 5188 Dungannon Road, Fairfax, Virginia 22030  (www.thelockeinstitute.org). I am Duncan Black Professor Emeritus of Economics at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030. I maintain a major research program in classical liberal political economy and I continue to serve as mentor and committee chairman for several doctoral students in economics at George Mason University.

 I have written 9  books: The British Monopolies Commission (1966, 2002), Steel and Public Policy  (1971), Antitrust and Economic Efficiency (1973), Welfare Economics: A Liberal Restatement (with Alan T. Peacock, 1975), The Right To Justice (1992), Liberty and the State (1993),  Trade Protection in the United States (with Richard E. Wagner and Willem Thorbecke, 1995),  Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government (with Nathanael Smith, 2009) and Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste, 2010.

I have edited 32 books, including Deficits (with James M. Buchanan and Robert D. Tollison, 1986),  Public Choice Theory (1993), Social Choice Theory (1993), The Political Economy of Rent Seeking (with Robert D. Tollison and Gordon Tullock, 1987), Property Rights and the Limits of Democracy (1993), The Political Economy of the Minimal State (1996), Classical Liberalism and Civil Society (1997), The Economics of Budget Deficits (with William F. Shughart and Robert D. Tollison, 2002), The Encyclopedia of Public Choice (with Friedrich Schneider, 2004),  The Origins of Law and Economics: Essays by the Founding Fathers (with Francesco Parisi, 2005), The Selected Works of Gordon Tullock (10 volumes, 2004-6) and Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy (with Friedrich Schneider, 2008).

I have published some 200 papers in such scholarly journals as The Journal of Political Economy, The Economic Journal, The Journal of  Law and Economics, The Journal of Legal Studies, The Journal of Public Economics, Public Choice, Economica, The European Journal of Political Economy, The Southern Economic Journal,  The Journal of Environmental Science and Management, The  University of Chicago Law Review, The International Review of Law and Economics, The Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, The Washington University Law Quarterly and  The Independent Review, as well as in  edited books,  in the fields of  welfare economics, public finance, environmental economics,  antitrust economics, regulatory economics, the theory of the firm,  macroeconomic policy, public choice, social choice,  philosophy, biography, analytical history,  law-and-economics, terrorism, and classical liberal political economy.

Typing my name into Google Scholar on June 12, 2012,  I identified 2,498 citations to my publications in scholarly journals.

 I was born in Southampton England, taught at the Universities of Nottingham, Canterbury, York and Newcastle Upon Tyne, and held summer fellowships at the Center for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University,  prior to migrating to the United States  to join Jim Buchanan and Gordon Tullock at the Center for Study of Public Choice in December 1983.  I co-edited Public Choice with Robert D. Tollison between May 1990 and July 2007.  I was a Founding Editor of The International Review of Law and Economics 1980-1987.   

My second most recent book (co-authored with Nathanael Smith) is Economic Contractions in the United States: A Failure of Government published by The Locke Institute in association with the Institute of Economic Affairs in September 2009. This book is available from www.amazon.com and sells for $12 plus shipping. My most recent book  Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste was published by The Locke Institute in December 2010.  It is available from www.amazon.com and sells for $10 plus shipping.  Both books are also available by personal check from www.thelockeinstitute.org.

I  decided to engage in a little blogging, somewhat reluctantly, primarily because we live in interesting times (a Chinese curse, by the way).

I encourage interested persons to engage in the blog through comments. Comments that are well-written, and that avoid bad language, will be published, whether  favorable or unfavorable to the ideas  that I promote. I do not intend to stray outside the areas of my expertise, though the reader, of course will be the judge whether I succeed or not in this objective.