Erik Matson

Mercatus Center and George Mason University

Dr. Erik W. Matson is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center and Deputy Director of the Adam Smith Program in the Department of Economics at George Mason University. Dr. Matson also teaches as a Lecturer at The Catholic University of America's Busch School of Business and serves as an Online Lecturer in Economics at The King's College. Dr. Matson received his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in December, 2017 and conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University. His research revolves around eighteenth-century British moral philosophy and political economy, the role of theology and ethics in economic thought, economic methodology, and the history of liberalism and its great great thinkers such as Adam Smith and David Hume. Dr. Matson has a significant amount of publications in a variety of forms such as journal articles, book reviews, chapters in edited volumes, and online publications. Dr. Matson's research has appeared in the Review of Austrian Economics, the Journal of Markets & Morality, the Journal of Economic Methodology, in addition to published chapters in works such as British International Thought in the Making, and his published book reviews such as 'A review of The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought by Dennis C. Rasmussen.' Dr. Matson also is the Co-editor at CL Press, a Fraser Institute project that publishes low-priced works in intellectual history, political economy, and moral philosophy, and is the Co-curator of Just Sentiments along with Daniel B. Klein, a Liberty Fund project of short essays seeking to fulfill Adam Smith's encouragement of shaping social views through philosophical interaction and education. Dr. Matson has previously worked for the American Enterprise Institute as a Course Developer and is currently an Instructor at the New Whiggery Fellowship Seminar at The Institute of Religion and Democracy.

• Just Sentiments—Welcome!
• Erik Matson on Adam Smith, David Hume, and the New Paternalists
• A Brief History of the Editions of TMS: Part I
• What’s Natural about Adam Smith’s Natural Liberty?
• Erik Matson on the Smith Questionnaire
• Adam Smith’s Synergistic Moral Authorizations
• A Brief History of the Editions of TMS: Part 2
• Adam Smith’s Space Odyssey
• David Hume’s Protestant Ethic
• Doing Good through Honest Commerce: Adam Smith and Joseph Butler
• Francis Hutcheson: Property as a Way to Virtue
• Nature, Convention, & Natural Convention
• Perspectives from Smith on Wealth and Happiness
• Three Modes of Patriotism