Steve Horwitz
The death has occurred of the economist Steve Horwitz. He died of cancer at the very young age of 57. He has left a big footprint on the world of neoliberal thought, describing himself as “an Austrian economist and a bleeding-heart libertarian.” The latter term, sometimes called neoclassical liberalism, stresses the compatibility of free markets and civil liberties with concern for the poorest and disadvantaged in society.
He was a distinguished scholar, awarded the Julian L Simon Memorial Award and the Prometheus Award for the Promotion of Economic Literacy. He studied under James Buchanan and others at George Mason University before teaching at St Lawrence University and then Ball University.
He contributed to monetary and macroeconomic theory from an Austrian perspective, and published several widely-acclaimed works on the subject. One of his noted studies was how markets and private institutions such as Walmart and the Red Cross responded to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
Dr Horwitz was widely praised for his analysis of the 2008 Financial Crisis, and spoke to an ASI meeting on the subject. He was an engaging and compelling speaker and an effective communicator. He asked our audience how they might explain it if 4,000 car crashes had occurred while he was speaking. It could have happened, he said, if all the traffic lights in London had been stuck on green, and went on to explain that in the run-up to the Crisis, all the financial traffic lights had been stuck on green. People borrowed and invested recklessly because money was made artificially cheap. It was a telling illustration.
He wrote regular columns for the Institute for Humane Studies and the Foundation for Economic Education, and was a Senior Affiliated Scholar of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He also wrote op-ed pieces for newspapers and appeared on radio and TV shows.
Today we mourn the passing of an insightful thinker and an articulate and passionate communicator. His legacy will long outlast his too-short life.