Daniel
Klein
Daniel Klein is Professor
of Economics at George Mason University. He holds degrees from George
Mason University and New York University, where in both cases he studied
the classical liberal traditions of economics. His teaching focuses on
economic principles, public policy issues, and spontaneous order economics.
Professor Klein has
published research on policy issues including toll roads, urban transit,
auto emission, credit reporting, and the Food and Drug Administration. He
has also written on spontaneous order, the discovery of opportunity, the
demand and supply of assurance, why government officials believe in the
goodness of bad policy, and the relationship between liberty, dignity, and
responsibility.
Klein is the chief editor of Econ Journal Watch, an online journal dedicated to economic criticism from a Smith-Hayek viewpoint. He has contributed several papers on the character heterogeneity of economists. He pushes the point that the cleavages in character run deeper than is usually acknowledged. Like Gunnar Myrdal, he believes that deep-seated ideological sensibilities play a role in one's purpose, basic formulations, and judgment throughout, and that candid communication calls for openness about own ideological sensibilities.
Klein's sensibilities are libertarian. His "Mere Libertarianism" offers a definition of libertarianism as movement and political persuasion.
Lately he has published several studies on the ideology of faculty in the social sciences (several studies coauthored with the Swedish sociologist Charlotta Stern and one with Christopher Cardiff).
He is the coauthor (with Adrian Moore and Binyam Reja) of Curb Rights: A
Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit, editor of Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct,
and editor of What Do Economists Contribute?
He has coauthored with Alex Tabarrok an extensive Web site on the
Food and Drug Administration (FDAReview.org), and co-edited with Fred
Foldvary a book The Half-Life of
Policy Rationales: How New Technology Affects Old Policy Issues (New York University Press, 2003).
He spends several months every year in Stockholm, where he is affiliated with the Ratio Institute as an Academic Advisor and Associate Fellow.