Courses

Antony Davies

Associate Professor of Economics

Duquesne University

Antony Davies is an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and Mercatus Affiliated Senior Scholar at George Mason University. His primary research interests include econometrics and public policy. Davies has authored op-eds in over thirty newspapers including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and New York Daily News, is a regular columnist for US News and the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and is a regular commentator on Wilkow! (TheBlaze TV). He is a frequent lecturer at policy conferences on Capitol Hill and at state capitals. In addition to teaching at the undergraduate, masters, and Ph.D. levels, Dr. Davies was Chief Analytics Officer at Parabon Computation, President and co-founder at Paragon Software (now Take-Two Interactive), and co-founder and Chief Analytics Officer at Repliqa (now Zoo Entertainment).

Dr. Davies earned his B.S. in Economics from Saint Vincent College, and Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany.

Blog Posts

Here’s why the tax code is so huge.

April 18, 2017
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The Fed & Monetary Policy

The United States tax code is 2600 pages long, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. To make sense of these 2600 pages, lawyers, accountants, financial planners, and all the other people we pay to walk us through these pages also need to reference Treasury regulations, commentary, relevant court cases, and even legislative history. In total, around 70,000 pages of text come to define or clarify the tax rules the federal government imposes on us. And this ignores the bevy of state and local tax laws to which we are all subject. There are no good reasons for the law to be this complicated,

Women prosper when markets are free

March 8, 2017
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Basic Economics

Today is International Women's Day and, in some of the least surprising news of the day, it turns out that women's equality ties into economic freedom. International Women's Day was founded by the American Socialist Party in 1909 and usually ends up celebrating women in government, politics, and statism, but let's look at something else. Cross-referencing data from the Fraser Institute, which looks at general economic freedom, and World Bank in the United Nations, which looks at gender disparity, we see that countries that are more economically free also have more gender equality. But could this

Relief from wars & politics

November 10, 2016
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Free Markets and Capitalism

The world is going to hell. A glance at the evening news shows nothing but violence, poverty, and rampant inequality. The 24 hour news cycle shows only a world in decline. As luck would have it though, not only is the world not going to hell, it is getting better in almost every conceivable way. To see the truth, all that’s required is a cursory look at the data, and a willingness to ignore the media’s perpetual gloom and doom storylines. Nothing better illustrates the difference between woeful perception and wonderful reality than gun violence. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey,

The Estate Tax is a Fundamentally Flawed Economic Policy

September 28, 2016
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Role of Government

Hillary Clinton is proposing a dramatic increase in the estate tax—a tax on your right to transfer property to your descendants—from 40% to 65%. There are two problems with this: The belief that estates should be taxed at all reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of economics. The actual taxing of estates has very different effects than those that advocates imagine it will have. The assumptions underlying the estate tax are fundamentally flawed The desire to tax estates often arises from a sense that someone who accumulates a lot of money has gained at the expense of others, which generates

YouTube's Attempt to Protect Viewers From Controversial Opinions Will Backfire

September 9, 2016
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Free Speech

YouTube is effectively censoring video content by barring videos that depict controversial subjects from collecting advertising revenue. A purist can argue that this isn't truly censoring as YouTube is not actually banning the videos but only prohibiting them from collecting revenue. But given that producing videos isn't costless, the effect is the same as banning videos on controversial subjects from all producers except those who can afford to produce their videos at a loss. And as strongly as I decry YouTube's choice to censor, I wholeheartedly support YouTube's right to censor. YouTube's right

Economic Freedom: A Humanitarian Case

October 16, 2015
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Economics

Without economic freedom, we cannot exercise our other freedoms. The freedom to speak is meaningless if the government prevents us from traveling from our homes or paying for a phone call. The freedom to write is meaningless if the government prevents us from selling newspapers. The freedom to worship is meaningless if the government forces us to behave immorally. The violations of freedoms of speech and press and religion are why we resist government. But the violation of economic freedom is what we resist. The data bear this out. In its Economic Freedom of North America and Economic Freedom