Garett Jones

Garett Jones is Professor of Economics and BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center, George Mason University, with a Ph.D. in economics from UC San Diego. He previously worked in the U.S. Senate, and his research spans macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the microfoundations of growth.

He is the author of the Singapore Trilogy with Stanford University Press: Hive Mind, on national IQ and productivity, reviewed in the Wall Street Journal; 10% Less Democracy, on trusting elites a little more and the masses a little less, reviewed in The Economist; and The Culture Transplant, on how migrants shape the economies they move to.

Before academia he spent fifteen months as an economic policy adviser to Senator Orrin Hatch through the 2003 tax cuts, after a dissertation at UC San Diego on how the Fed controls short-run rates. He has edited the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and advised the Reserve stablecoin project. In this SuperDebate he argues the affirmative: the United States would be better governed if more public policy decisions were insulated from direct electoral control.