Contributors

Lawrence W. “Larry” Reed is President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), where he also serves as Humphreys Family Senior Fellow and Ron Manners Global Ambassador for Liberty. He became FEE’s president in 2008 after years of writing and speaking for the organization and serving as chairman of its board of trustees in the 1990s. He retired from the presidency in 2019.

Before joining FEE, Reed served for 21 years as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan, from 1987 to 2008. Earlier, he taught economics at Northwood University, where he also chaired the economics department.

Reed holds a B.A. in economics from Grove City College and an M.A. in history from Slippery Rock State University. He has also received honorary doctorates from Central Michigan University and Northwood University.

A prolific writer and speaker, Reed has authored more than 2,000 columns and articles for publications in the United States and abroad, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The American Spectator, The Epoch Times, Detroit News, and Detroit Free Press. He has authored or co-authored eight books, including Was Jesus a Socialist?, Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character and Conviction, and Born of Ideas: How Principles, Faith, and Courage Forged America. He has also co-authored and edited five e-books and has appeared frequently on radio and television.

His work in political and economic affairs has taken him as a freelance journalist to 92 countries on six continents. He advises organizations worldwide and has served on the board of the State Policy Network, including one term as president.

Reed’s honors include Poland’s Grand Cross of the Order of Merit, the Mackinac Center’s Champion of Freedom Award, Grove City College’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and the Citizen Warrior Award from Heirs of the Republic. A native of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, he lives in Newnan, Georgia. goes here

Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian specializing in the “long” 19th century United States, as well as general macroeconomic trends. He is a leading expert on black colonization during the Civil War era, and its sometimes-strained relationship with the African-American emigrationist movement of the same period. He studies the political economy of slavery in the Atlantic world, and particularly its relationship to public policy. His broader research extends to the economic history of the United States and includes historical tariff policy, the federal income tax, and the relationship between taxation and wealth inequality. He also researches the economic dimensions of higher education, and the history of economic thought.

Magness’ research has appeared in multiple scholarly venues, including the Economic Journal, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Southern Economic Journal, Social Science Quarterly, Public Choice, the Journal of the Early Republic, the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Slavery & Abolition, Constitutional Political Economy, the International Trade Journal, the Journal of Supreme Court History, and Liberal Education.

His popular press writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Britannica.com, Politico, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the History News Network, and the New York Times. He has fact-checked Politifact, discussed the economics of higher education on NPR’s Marketplace, and presented on Black Abolitionism for C-Span’s American History TV.

Magness holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He obtained his MPP and Ph.D. from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia, specializing in economic history and international trade. He has taught at Berry College, George Mason University, and American University in the Washington, D.C. region. He is currently the David J. Theroux Chair at the Independent Institute.

Art Carden is a professor of economics at Samford University’s Brock School of Business. He is also a senior fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research and the Fraser Institute; a research fellow with the Independent Institute; a senior fellow with the Beacon Center of Tennessee; a senior research fellow with the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics; and co-editor of the Southern Economic Journal. His research on mass-market retailers, economic history, and the history of economic ideas has appeared in journals like the Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Urban Economics, Public Choice, and Contemporary Economic Policy. 

He is a contributor to Forbes.com, and his commentaries and other articles have appeared in USA Today, Productive!, Black Belt, and many other outlets. He earned a B.S. and M.A. from the University of Alabama and an A.M. and Ph.D. from Washington University in Saint Louis. Before joining the faculty at Samford, Carden taught economics at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. 

He is also the author of Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World (with Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, University of Chicago Press, 2020), Strangers With Candy: Observations From the Ordinary Business of Life (Libertarian Christian Institute, 2023), and Mere Economics: Lessons For and From the Ordinary Business of Life (with Caleb S. Fuller, B&H Academic). 

He lives in Birmingham with his wife and three children.

Degrees and Certifications

• Ph.D., Washington University, St. Louis, Economics

• M.A., University of Alabama, Economics

• B.S., University of Alabama, Economics

• Graduate Certificate in New Institutional Social Sciences from Washington University, St. Louis

Tawni H. Ferrarini is the Associate Director of the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise, the Director of the Economic Education Center, and the Robert W. Plaster Professor of Economic Education at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo.

 Dr. Ferrarini is the 2020 recipient of the Patty Elder International Award and was the 2015 president. She was the inaugural recipient of the National Association of Economic Educator’s Abbejean Kehler Technology Award. Other accolades include a 2009 Distinguished Faculty at Northern Michigan University and 2009 Michigan Economic Educator of the Year Award. 

 Dr. Ferrarini has written curriculum materials for the Council on Economic Education - USA and Fraser Institute - Canada. She specializes in the effective use of technology in the classroom and the integration of economics across subject areas, especially American history. She was instrumental in helping to formally establish the Council on Economic Education – Japan, and is a consultant for the Korea Development Institute in Seoul.

Professor Ferrarini publishes in economic education, technology, and education journals. She is a co-author of Common Sense Economics (2016), Economic Episodes in American History (2019), and Teachers Can Be Financially Fit (2020). She earned her doctorate in economics in 1995 from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied economic history under the 1993 Nobel Laureate Douglass C. North.