William F. Shughart II

In 2011, Shughart became professor emeritus at the University of Mississippi and was appointed as J. Fish Smith Professor in Public Choice at Utah State University’s Jon M. Huntsman School of Business.

Shughart has served the Southern Economic Association for most of his academic career, being a rank-and-file member and board member for many years before becoming the President of the Association for the 2009 term. He also serves as the senior associate editor of the Southern Economic Journal since 2012. In 2013, he was appointed as an associate editor of The Independent Review and as the research director of The Independent Institute.

In the late 2000s, energy policy also become a recurring topic in his research.

In 1997, Shughart edited the book Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination for which he won the 1998 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. He co-authored the 1998 book, The Political Economy of the New Deal with the late Jim Couch, one of his University of Mississippi doctoral students.

A lot of Shughart's work has been focused on industrial organization, also the subject of his first textbook, entitled The Organization of Industry published in 1990. Aside from industrial organization much of his work in 1980s and 1990s has been focused on tax policy, education reform and college sports. His second book, Antitrust Policy and Interest-Group Politics also was published in 1990.

Shughart left Clemson University in 1985 and joined George Mason University as an associate professor of economics and a research associate at the Center for Study of Public Choice. Three years later, he left George Mason University and started teaching at the University of Mississippi. At the University of Mississippi, he was appointed to the P.M.B. Self, William King Self and Henry C. Self Free Enterprise Chair. In 1998, he was named an F.A.P Barnard Distinguished Professor and held a Robert M. Hearin Chair at the University of Mississippi.

Right after completing his Ph.D., Shughart taught at the University of Arizona in 1978-1979. He then worked at the Federal Trade Commission as a staff economist. In 1982, he left his position as the special assistant to the Director of the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission to join Clemson University as an assistant professor.

Shughart completed his B.A. in Economics in 1969 followed by M.S. in Economics in 1970 from Texas A&M University. In 1973, as part of his military service, he worked as a courier for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as a systems analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses (now CNA Corp.). After his honorable discharge from the U.S. Navy, he received his Ph.D. in Economics from Texas A&M University.