Benjamin Powell

Benjamin Powell is the Executive Director of the Free Market Institute and a Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University and a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute. He is the secretary-treasurer of the Southern Economic Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He earned his BS in economics and finance from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and his MA and PhD in economics from George Mason University. Powell is the...See more

Benjamin Powell is the Executive Director of the Free Market Institute and a Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University and a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute. He is the secretary-treasurer of the Southern Economic Association and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He earned his BS in economics and finance from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and his MA and PhD in economics from George Mason University. Powell is the author of Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy (Cambridge, 2014), coauthor of Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way through the Unfree World (2019), and editor or coeditor of four other books, including The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy (2015). He is the author of more than seventy-five scholarly articles and policy studies. 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 many other outlets. He has appeared on numerous radio and television shows, including Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, Showtime, and CNBC, and he was a regular guest commentator on Fox Business's Freedom Watch and Stossel. See less