Tyler Cowen

"Marginal Revolution (blog)" redirects here. For the blog's other co-author, see Alex Tabarrok.

Tyler Cowen
Born	(1962-01-21) January 21, 1962 Bergen County, New Jersey, U.S.
Academic career
Field	Cultural economics
Institution	George Mason University
School or tradition	Neoclassical economics American libertarianism
Alma mater	George Mason University (BS) Harvard University (MS, PhD)
Doctoral advisor	Thomas Schelling
Influences	Chicago School Carl Menger Plato

Tyler Cowen (/ˈkaʊən/; born January 21, 1962) is an American economist, columnist and blogger. He is a professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog Marginal Revolution, together with co-author Alex Tabarrok. Cowen and Tabarrok also maintain the website Marginal Revolution University, a venture in online education.

Cowen writes the "Economic Scene" column for The New York Times and since July 2016 has been a regular opinion columnist at Bloomberg Opinion. He also writes for such publications as The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek and the Wilson Quarterly. He serves as general director of George Mason's Mercatus Center, a university research center that focuses on the market economy. Since 2015, he has hosted the podcast Conversations with Tyler. In September, 2018, Tyler and his team at George Mason University launched Emergent Ventures, a grant and fellowship focused on "moon-shot" ideas.

He was ranked at number 72 among the "Top 100 Global Thinkers" in 2011 by Foreign Policy Magazine "for finding markets in everything". In a 2011 poll of experts by The Economist, Cowen was included in the top 36 nominations of "which economists were most influential over the past decade".

Education and personal life

Cowen was raised in Hillsdale, New Jersey and attended Pascack Valley High School. At 15, he became the youngest ever New Jersey state chess champion. Cowen is of Irish ancestry.

He graduated from George Mason University with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics in 1983 and received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1987 with his thesis titled Essays in the theory of welfare economics. At Harvard, he was mentored by game theorist Thomas Schelling, the 2005 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He is married to Natasha Cowen, a lawyer.

Writings

Culture

The Los Angeles Times has described Cowen as "a man who can talk about Haitian voodoo flags, Iranian cinema, Hong Kong cuisine, Abstract Expressionism, Zairian music and Mexican folk art with seemingly equal facility." One of Cowen's primary research interests is the economics of culture. He has written books on fame (What Price Fame?), art (In Praise of Commercial Culture) and cultural trade (Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures). In Markets and Cultural Voices, he relays how globalization is changing the world of three Mexican amate painters. Cowen argues that free markets change culture for the better, allowing them to evolve into something more people want. Other books include Public Goods and Market Failures, The Theory of Market Failure, Explorations in the New Monetary Economics, Risk and Business Cycles, Economic Welfare and New Theories of Market Failure.

In 2023, Cowen falsely claimed on his blog that Francis Bacon was a critic of the printing press, including fictional quotations and references he had gotten from ChatGPT.

Books

Cowen presenting his 2011 book The Great Stagnation

• Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World, with Daniel Gross. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2022, ISBN 978-1250275813, OCLC 1227086238.
• Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1250110541, OCLC 1031569569.
• Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals. Stripe Press. 2018. ISBN 978-1732265134.
• The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream. New York: St. Martins Press. 2017. ISBN 978-1250108692. OCLC 981982936..
• Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. Dutton Adult. 2013. p. 304. ISBN 978-0525953739. (Wikipedia page)
• With Alex Tabarrok: Modern Principles of Economics (2 ed.). Worth Publishers. 2012. p. 900. ISBN 978-1429239974.
• An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies. New York: Dutton Adult. 2012. ISBN 978-0525952664. OCLC 839314802.
• The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better. Dutton Adult. 2011. ISBN 978-0525952718. OCLC 714718051.
• The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy (2010)
• Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World. Dutton Adult. 2009. ISBN 978-0525951230.
• Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist. Dutton Adult. 2007. ISBN 978-0525950257.
• Good and Plenty: The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2006. ISBN 978-0691120423.
• Markets and Cultural Voices: Liberty vs. Power in the Lives of Mexican Amate Painters (Economics, Cognition, and Society). University of Michigan Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0472068890.
• Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2004. ISBN 978-0691117836.
• What Price Fame?. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2002. ISBN 978-0674008090.
• In Praise of Commercial Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2000. ISBN 978-0674001886.
• Risk and Business Cycles: New and Old Austrian Perspectives. Psychology Press. 1998. ISBN 978-0415169196.
• Explorations in the New Monetary Economics (1994)
• Public Goods and Market Failures: A Critical Examination (2 ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 1991. ISBN 978-1560005704.

The New York Times columns

Cowen's New York Times columns cover a wide range of issues such as the 2008 financial crisis.

Dining guide

His dining guide for the D.C. area, "Tyler Cowen's Ethnic Dining Guide", has been written about by The Washington Post and Washington City Paper.

Political philosophy

Cowen has written papers on political philosophy and ethics. He co-wrote a paper with philosopher Derek Parfit arguing against the social discount rate. In a 2006 paper, he argued that the epistemic problem fails to refute consequentialism.

Cowen has been described as a "libertarian bargainer" who can influence practical policy making, yet he endorsed bank bailouts in his March 2, 2009 column in The New York Times. In a 2007 article entitled "The Paradox of Libertarianism", Cowen argued that libertarians "should embrace a world with growing wealth, growing positive liberty, and yes, growing government. We don't have to favor the growth in government per se, but we do need to recognize that sometimes it is a package deal".

In 2012, David Brooks called Cowen "one of the most influential bloggers on the right", writing that he is among those who "start from broadly libertarian premises but do not apply them in a doctrinaire way".

In an August, 2014 blog post, Cowen wrote: "Just to summarize, I generally favor much more immigration but not open borders, I am a liberal on most but not all social issues, and I am market-oriented on economic issues. On most current foreign policy issues I am genuinely agnostic as to what exactly we should do but skeptical that we are doing the right thing at the moment. I don't like voting for either party or for third parties".

In a 2020 New Year's Day Marginal Revolution post, Cowen outlined a philosophical framework he dubbed "State Capacity Libertarianism". State Capacity Libertarianism differs from classical liberalism in that it acknowledges the State's role in funding and executing megaprojects and a non-isolationist foreign policy.

Cowen has described himself as a liberal on most social issues and supports same-sex marriage. After the Supreme Court issued its holding regarding same-sex marriage, Cowen said that "this is exciting and very positive news. Most of all, it is a breakthrough for those people who can now marry, or exercise the choice not to marry".

Cowen is a teetotaler, stating he is "with the Mormons" on alcohol, later stating: "I encourage people to just completely, voluntarily abstain from alcohol and make it a social norm".

In July 2019, Cowen co-authored an essay in The Atlantic with Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison calling for a "new science of progress".

In July 2023, Cowen joined "The Growth Commission", a non-partisan group convened by former UK prime minister Liz Truss to promote economic policies that promote growth.

Conversations with Tyler

Conversations with Tyler is Cowen's podcast produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason. Unlike Marginal Revolution, Conversations is hosted by Cowen exclusively. Guests are usually authors and academics, but have also included athletes (Martina Navratilova, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), military personnel (Stanley A. McChrystal), entrepreneurs (Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Armstrong), novelists (Emily St. John Mandel) and a homeless person from Washington, D.C. named "Alexander the Grate".

The show has two recurring segments:

• "Underrated/Overrated", where guests are given a quick-fire list of cultural works or academic concepts and asked to say whether they agree with the general critical response received.
• The [guest name] Production Function, where guests are asked to describe their personal productivity habits.

In describing the podcast, Cowen repeatedly characterises it as "...the conversation I want to have".

Publications

Selected journal articles

• Cowen, Tyler (December 22, 2011). "An Economic and Rational Choice Approach to the Autism Spectrum and Human Neurodiversity". GMU Working Paper in Economics. 11 (58). SSRN 1975809.
• Cowen, Tyler (October 7, 2011). "The Microeconomics of Public Choice in Developing Economies: A Case Study of One Mexican Village". The Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-being of Nations. SSRN 1940219.
• Cowen, Tyler; Alexander Tabarrok (October 2000). "An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular Art, or High and Low Culture". Southern Economic Journal. 67 (2): 232–253. doi:10.2307/1061469. JSTOR 1061469.
• Cowen, Tyler; Amihai Glazer; Katarina Zajc (2000). "Credibility May Require Discretion, Not Rules" (PDF). Journal of Public Economics. 76 (2): 295–306. doi:10.1016/S0047-2727(99)00051-1.
• Cowen, Tyler (August 1997). "Should the Central Bank Target CPI Futures?" (PDF). Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. 29 (3): 275–285. doi:10.2307/2953693. JSTOR 2953693.
• Cowen, Tyler; Daniel Sutter (1997). "Politics and the Pursuit of Fame" (PDF). Public Choice. 93: 19–35. doi:10.1023/A:1017939531594. S2CID 152467126.
• Cowen, T.; Robin Grier (1996). "Do Artists Suffer From A Cost Disease?" (PDF). Rationality and Society. 8 (1): 5–24. doi:10.1177/104346396008001001. S2CID 153392382.
• Cowen, Tyler; Amihai Glazer (1996). "More Monitoring Can Induce Less Effort" (PDF). Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. 30: 113–123. doi:10.1016/S0167-2681(96)00845-1.
• Cowen, Tyler; Alexander Tabarrok (April 1995). "Good Grapes and Bad Lobsters: Applying the Alchian and Allen Theorem" (PDF). Economic Inquiry. 33 (2): 253–256. doi:10.1111/j.1465-7295.1995.tb01860.x.
• Cowen, Tyler; Randall Kroszner (May 1989). "Scottish Banking before 1845: A Model for Laissez-Faire?". Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. 21 (2): 221–231. doi:10.2307/1992370. JSTOR 1992370.
• Cowen, Tyler; Richard Fink (September 1985). "Inconsistent Equilibrium Constructs: The Evenly Rotating Economy of Mises and Rothbard". American Economic Review. 75 (4): 866–869. JSTOR 1821365.

Select articles

• Cowen, Tyler (August 11, 2012). "Two Prisms for Looking at China's Problems". New York Times.
• Cowen, Tyler (June 16, 2012). "Broken Trust Takes Time to Mend". New York Times.
• "What Export-Oriented America Means". The American Interest. May–June 2012. Archived from the original on October 21, 2013.
• "Six Rules for Dining Out". The Atlantic. May 2012.
• "6 Ideas for the Ash Heap of History". Foreign Policy. November 28, 2011. Archived from the original on August 16, 2012. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
• "The Inequality That Matters". The American Interest. January–February 2011. Archived from the original on October 21, 2013.
• "The Lack of Wars May Be Hurting Economic Growth"- NYTimes, June 14, 2014

External links

• Cowen's bio at the Mercatus Center
• Tyler Cowen's Web Page at GMU
• Marginal Revolution
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Conversations with Tyler
• China Is Big Trouble for the U.S. Balance of Trade, Right? Well, Not So Fast
• Roberts, Russ. "Tyler Cowen Podcasts". EconTalk. Library of Economics and Liberty.
• What's wrong with cute-o-nomics?
• Review of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
• New York Books Review of Discover Your Inner Economist
• Tyler Cowen publications indexed by Google Scholar
• Tyler Cowen on the Muck Rack journalist listing site