Robert Lawson

Dr. Robert Lawson holds the Jerome M. Fullinwider Endowed Centennial Chair in Economic Freedom in the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at the SMU Cox School of Business. From 2008-2011, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Finance at Auburn University. From 1996-2008, he taught at Capital University where he held the George H. Moor Chair. Dr. Lawson is co-author of the widely-cited Economic Freedom of the World annual report which provides an economic freedom index for over 140 countries.
He has professional publications in journals such as Public Choice, Cato Journal, Kyklos, Journal of Labor Research, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, and European Journal of Political Economy. He has served as president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and as a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. He blogs regularly for divisionoflabour.com. Dr. Lawson earned his B.S. in economics from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from Florida State University.