Steven Horwitz

In fall 2017, Horwitz joined the Department of Economics at Ball State University as the John H. Schnatter Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise. He is also an affiliated faculty member of the John H. Schnatter Institute for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise.

Horwitz is a long-time faculty member at the summer seminars of the Institute for Humane Studies and the Foundation for Economic Education. In summer 2007, he was a visiting scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. Horwitz is a Senior Affiliated Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, where he has conducted nationally recognized research on the role of Wal-Mart and the Coast Guard in the response to Hurricane Katrina. He is also a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute in Canada and has been a member of the Mont Pelerin Society since 1996.

Outside of his professional interests, Horwitz is a huge fan of hockey, especially the Detroit Red Wings, and classic rock, especially the Canadian band Rush. He combined his hobby and his professional life having written two scholarly articles on Rush in 2003.

At St. Lawrence, Horwitz served as the Associate Dean of the First Year from 2001 to 2007, overseeing the university's First Year Program. He has a national reputation as an expert on living-learning programs and on teaching research and communication skills to first-year students. He was also interim director of the Center for Teaching and Learning in 2003–04.

Most of Horwitz's professional work has been in the area of monetary theory and macroeconomics from an Austrian school perspective, with his 2000 book Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective best summarizing that work. He has also contributed to Austrian economics and the history of economic thought as well as the social thought of F. A. Hayek. In recent years, he has been exploring the economics and social theory of the family, including his most recent book Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the evolution of Social Institutions. His "Open Letter to My Friends on the Left" in September 2008 was a widely read libertarian analysis of the mortgage crisis and has been translated into five languages. He is a frequent op-ed contributor to major newspapers and has appeared on numerous radio shows as well as TV appearances on Stossel, Freedom Watch, and Smerconish on CNN.

In 1989, Horwitz joined the economics department of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. In 1993, he was appointed the inaugural Flora Irene Eggleston Chair in Economics. He was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1995 and to full professor in 2002. In 1999, he was awarded the annual Frank Piskor Lectureship, and in 2003 he was the recipient of the J. Calvin Keene award, which recognizes high standards of personal scholarship, effective teaching and moral concern. In 2007, Horwitz was elected by the faculty to one of six campus-wide Charles A. Dana Professorships.

He received his M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990) in Economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. At George Mason, he studied with Don Lavoie (who chaired his dissertation committee), George Selgin, Karen Vaughn, James M. Buchanan, Don Boudreaux, and Richard E. Wagner.

Horwitz was born in Detroit, Michigan to Ronald and Carol Horwitz. He was raised in Oak Park, Michigan and graduated from Berkley High School in Berkley, Michigan in 1981. He graduated cum laude with an A.B. in Economics and Philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1985, where he was also active with several libertarian student groups and where he wrote and performed with the Sunday Funnies/Comedy Company sketch comedy group.

Steven Horwitz (born 7 February 1964) is an American economist of the Austrian School. Horwitz is currently the Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise in the Department of Economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. In 2017, he retired as the Dana Professor of Economics Emeritus at St. Lawrence University.