Samuel Gregg

Samuel Gregg is the Friedrich Hayek Chair in Economics and Economic History at the American Institute for Economic Research, an affiliate scholar at the Acton Institute, and author, most recently, of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World.

Posts by Samuel Gregg

Law and morality: not a simple affair

The role of the state, in spheres ranging from public morality to the economy, is one of several axes around which debates about the conservative movement’s future are presently revolving. In a 2020 article, I critiqued common-good constitutionalism for its misreading of how the natural law tradition treats the role of the state and law vis-à-vis morality. Continue Reading...

Understanding Pinochet

Writing a biography of someone like General Augusto Pinochet is fraught with potential pitfalls. Does it become an exercise in whitewashing someone whose regime oversaw a brutal repression which included the “disappearing” of approximately 2,228 people? Continue Reading...

The persecution of Jimmy Lai

It’s no secret that China isn’t exactly flavor of the month throughout the world right now. Before the court of global opinion, the reputation of the Chinese regime is about as low as it can go. Continue Reading...

The great price of America’s great lockdown

One reason why economists are viewed as modern-day Cassandras is that they tell us many things we don’t want to hear. Economics points relentlessly to the costs and benefits associated with particular decisions about alternative uses of scarce resources. Continue Reading...

Markets, populism and a fading American dream

The political divisions that started erupting across America in 2015 are about many things. These include the meaning of national sovereignty, the sense of a growing chasm between the political class and everyone else, and angst about what many believe to be unwarranted accelerations in wealth and income inequalities. Continue Reading...