Robert Higgs
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Robert Higgs (born 1 February 1944) is an American economist of the Austrian School.
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[edit] Participation in academia
Higgs graduated cum laude from San Francisco State College with a Bachelor of Arts in economics (1965). He received his PhD with Distinction in economics from Johns Hopkins University in 1968.
He is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute (since September 1994), and is editor of Independent Review (since 1995). He is an adjunct faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. Higgs is also a contributor to LewRockwell.com. His areas of special interest include defense economics, environmental economics, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and health care issues, government growth, property rights, race relations, and war.
Higgs has held teaching positions at University of Washington, Lafayette College, and Seattle University. He has also been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and has supervised dissertations in the PhD program at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He also belongs to the Liberty and Power group blog at the History News Network.
Higgs currently resides in Covington, Louisiana.
[edit] The Ratchet Effect
One significant contribution by Higgs is his description of what he refers to in Crisis and Leviathan (and elsewhere) as the ratchet effect. According to Higgs, government tends to grow at a fairly regular rate under normal circumstances. When a crisis such as war or economic depression arises, however, government expands at a far more rapid pace in response. Then, when the crisis subsides, the size of government is reduced, but not to the pre-crisis levels. Thus, crises "ratchet up" the size of government at a rate greater than would otherwise be the case.
According to a Mises.org article[1] detailing the July 2003 Higgs seminar, "Crisis and Liberty: The Expansion of Government Power in American History,"
- His "ratchet" theory of the expansion of power provides a model for understanding the current policy environment in which the government is using war and the threat of terrorism to justify its assaults on the personal and economic liberties of Americans.
Tibor Machan[2], Jörg Guido Hülsmann[3], Joseph Salerno[4], Lew Rockwell[5], and other scholars have discussed the Higgs Ratchet Effect in their writings.
[edit] The Iraqi War
A critic of the cost of the Iraqi war, Higgs has written in the Los Angeles Chronicle (Feb. 2008) that only a high toll in casualties or economic hardship will end the Iraqi war, not cogent arguments. HIggs writes: "It follows directly that up to this point the continued prosecution of the war has served the leaders´ interests. They may say they are trying to end the war. They may have secured their election or reelection, as many of the Democrats now serving in Congress have, by promising to do whatever they can to end the war. Yet the truth is that they´ve sold the public a bill of goods. When the leaders have considered all the personal consequences they expect to follow from acting to end the war, they have concluded that, all things being considered, doing so does not serve their interest, and therefore they have refrained from doing so."
[edit] Books
[edit] As author:
- Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865-1914 (1977; paperback edition 1980) Nominated for the American Historical Association's Beveridge Award
- Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government (1987)
- Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society (2004)
- Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 (2005)
- Depression, War and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy (2006)
[edit] As editor:
- Arms, Politics, and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (1990)
- Hazardous to Our Health? FDA Regulation of Health Care Products (1995)
- Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy with Carl P. Close (2005)
- The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today with Carl P. Close (2006)
[edit] Articles
- "The War in Iraq: 1,760 Days and Counting" (Los Angeles Chronicle, Feb. 5, 2008)
