Steven Horwitz
Ball State University
Steven Horwitz was the founder of the Institute for the Study of Political Economy, professor, and a world-renowned economist and author. Horwitz passed away in 2021, after a nearly four year battle with cancer. Horwitz served as the Distinguished Professor of Free Enterprise and Director of the Institute for the Study of Political Economy in the Department of Economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. Horwitz is the author of four books in Austrian economics, the history and theory of monetary policy, American political economy, and much more. His books include, Monetary Evolution, Free Banking, and Economic Order (Westview, 1992), Microfoundations and Macroeconomics: An Austrian Perspective (Routledge, 2000), Hayek's Modern Family: Classical Liberalism and the Evolution of Social Institutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), and Austrian Economics: An Introduction (Cato Institute, 2020). Dr. Horwitz has also been published extensively in academic journals such as History of Political Economy, The Independent Review, Southern Economic Journal, The Review of Austrian Economics, and The Cambridge Journal of Economics. Dr. Horwitz's work has also been published in non-academic forums such as the Washington Examiner, The Wall Street Journal, The Freeman, Law & Liberty, and the Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog where he contributed regularly. Some of his most impactful research is "Wal-Mart to the Rescue: Private Enterprise's Response to Hurricane Katrina," The Independent Review, 13 (4), Spring 2009, pp. 511-28, and "The Functions of the Family in the Great Society," Cambridge Journal of Economics, 29 (5), September 2005, pp. 669-84. Dr. Horwitz was an Affiliated Senior Scholar at the Mercatus Center in Arlington, VA, a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute in Canada, a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and Economics Editor at the Cato Institute's libertarianism.org project. Dr. Horwitz appeared on radio and television several times such as on Stossel, CNN, and Freedom Watch. Dr. Horwitz he was the 2020 recipient of the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, was a guest speaker to professional, student, policymaker, and general audiences throughout the entire world, and was also Dana Professor of Economics Emeritus at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, where he taught for almost three decades. In 2021, the Institute for the Study of Political Economy hosted the Horwitz Nobel Prize Panel. Dr. Horwitz was much more than an economist, fellow economist Art Carden remembered Horwitz as “a dedicated scholar, a passionate teacher, a good friend, and an insightful mentor.” Trevor Burrus, research fellow in the Cato Institute, called him “the great libertarian economist and my friend … a teacher, a father, a husband, a communicator, a mentor, a Rush fan, a scholar, a writer, a pontificator, and much more.” After his passing, Dr. Horwitz's wife, Dr. Sarah Skwire, a senior fellow and director of communications at Liberty Fund, donated his substantial collection of books to the Institute for the Study of Political Economy, further assisting the staff and students of Ball State University to advance in their education.