(Sometimes readers confuse who writes a particular post here at Cafe Hayek. This one is by Russ Roberts.)
I am happy and sad to announce that I am hanging up my chalk, leaving the formal classroom and George Mason, and becoming a full-time fellow at the Hoover Institution. I will be staying in the DC area, though, so if you want to reach me, I’ll still be in the eastern time zone.
The past nine years at George Mason have been, I think, my most productive time as an economist. I have learned much from my colleagues, particularly my co-host here at Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux. George Mason is an unusual place–it is proud and unafraid to go its own way and I have benefited greatly from its embrace of economic education writ large. I have been lucky to have colleagues who respected what I did even though it was outside the standard mainstream practices of academic economists. And I have been inspired by that respect and educated by their insights to do, what I hope, is some of my best work as an educator and educational entrepreneur.
At the Mercatus Center, I have held the Smith chair and I owe a great debt to the Smith family for that support and their inspiration. The Mercatus Center pushed me to write a lengthy essay on the financial crisis and provided useful assistance with the Keynes-Hayek rap videos. I’m very grateful for that help. I’ve also very much enjoyed being part of the Center’s devotion to partisan-free policy work and education.
I will keep some formal connection to George Mason, but regardless of how that gets structured, I will certainly retain a connection in spirit regardless of what form that connection takes.
Despite my affection for George Mason, there are many special aspects of Hoover and Stanford that make this change irresistible. I’ve been associated with Hoover for the last ten years and my time there is always very productive. It’s an incredible place. Though most of my time will be here on the east coast, the chance to spend more time at Hoover and be a bigger part of the Hoover community will, I hope, create new opportunities for economic education. I’ll very shortly be sharing here at the Cafe a new venture I’m doing through Hoover on charts, data and statistics.
I’m hopeful that by leaving the formal classroom I’ll have more time and opportunity to create educational material for the web and reach a larger audience. And a lot of exciting things are happening at Hoover and Stanford on the forefront of web-based education. I’ll continue to share all that I do on that front with the readers of Cafe Hayek. Thanks for being part of the ride.
UPDATE: A number of folks here and on twitter have asked about whether I’ll still be doing EconTalk. Absolutely.
