Encourages students to think creatively.
A role model for academic excellence.
Tyler Cowen is the Holbert L. Harris Chair of Economics and a Professor of Economics at George Mason University within the Business & Economics faculty. He earned a B.S. in Economics from George Mason University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Currently, he serves as Faculty Director and Chairman of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Professor of Economics at the Center for the Study of Public Choice, and Distinguished Senior Fellow in the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Cowen's research specializations include monetary theory, financial economics, welfare economics, economics of the arts, globalization, economics and culture, microeconomics, and political philosophy. He has supervised numerous Ph.D. dissertations, including those by Janna Lu (2025), Filip Jolevski (2024), and Sriteja R. Burla (2023).
Cowen has authored and co-authored many influential books, such as Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation (2013), An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies (2012), The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better (2011), Modern Principles of Economics with Alex Tabarrok (2009), The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream (2017), Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World with Daniel Gross (2022), and GOAT: Who is the Greatest Economist of all Time and Why Does it Matter? (2023). He edited Public Goods and Market Failures and co-authored Explorations in the New Monetary Economics with Randall Kroszner. Cowen contributes to public discourse via daily posts on the Marginal Revolution blog, a Bloomberg View column, the Conversations with Tyler podcast, and an ethnic dining guide for Washington, DC. He co-founded Marginal Revolution University and established Emergent Ventures and Fast Grants, which distributed over $50 million in 260 grants for COVID-19 research. In 2025, he was named to TIME magazine's inaugural Philanthropy 100 list.