Robert Higgs | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | February 1, 1944 Okemah, Oklahoma, U.S. |
| Academic background | |
| Doctoral advisor | Edwin Mills H. Louis Stettler |
| Influences | Kuznets, North, Coase, Schumpeter, Mises, Hayek, Rothbard |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Economic history,political economy,natural resource economics,health economics,military economics |
| School or tradition | Austrian School |
| Doctoral students | Price V. Fishback |
Robert Higgs (born February 1,1944) is an American economic historian and economist. He is known for research on the growth of the United States government,especially the ratchet effect,the idea that state power expands during wars and other crises and only partly recedes afterward,which he developed in Crisis and Leviathan (1987). [1] [2] [3] He is a retired senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute,where he founded and later served as editor at large of The Independent Review ,and he has held faculty appointments at the University of Washington,Lafayette College,and Seattle University. [1] [4] In an essay he has described his political philosophy as a libertarian anarchism. [5]
