Obamanomics: Growing the Pie or Dividing the Pie?

Jeffrey A. Miron, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, discusses the economic impact of the federal government’s 2009 stimulus package. Miron says because tax liabilities accompany any government spending program, last year’s stimulus package may not have expanded the output of the American economy, but instead simply redistributed the economy’s output. This lecture was presented in conjunction with Saint Louis University’s John Cook School of Business on March 17, 2010.

Miron’s area of expertise is the economics of libertarianism, with particular emphasis on the economics of illegal drugs. He has served on the faculty at the University of Michigan and as a visiting professor at the Sloan School of Management, M.I.T. and the Department of Economics, Harvard University. From 1992-1998, he was chairman of the Department of Economics at Boston University. He is the author of Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition and The Economics of Seasonal Cycles, in addition to numerous op-eds and journal articles. He has been the recipient of an Olin Fellowship from the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Earhart Foundation Fellowship, and a Sloan Foundation Faculty Research Fellowship. Miron received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Swarthmore College in 1979 and a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T. in 1984.