Russ Roberts

Roberts earned an undergraduate degree in economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has taught at George Mason University, Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Rochester, Stanford University and UCLA, and was named teacher of the year three times.⁠[1]

Roberts has written three economics novels, The Choice, The Invisible Heart and The Price of Everything; Business Week named The Choice one of the top ten books of 1994.⁠[1]

Roberts founded the weekly economics podcast EconTalk in 2006 and hosts it. By 2026 the show had published 1,074 episodes.⁠[2][3]

With John Papola he also produced two rap videos about Keynes and Hayek, and he created educational works including “It’s a Wonderful Loaf” and The Numbers Game at PolicyEd.org.⁠[2]

In 2014 Portfolio published Roberts’s How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness.⁠[2]

On September 8, 2017, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry (a16z) released the a16z Podcast episode “Adjusting to Trade… and Innovation,” hosted by a16z editor Sonal Chokshi, with Roberts and the economics columnist Noah SmithNoah SmithNoah Smith is an American economics commentator who writes the Substack newsletter blog Noahpinion; he was previously an economics columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University.Open the full entry as guests. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019, as “a16z Podcast | Adjusting to Trade... and Innovation.”⁠[4][5]

The episode covered the history of trade and its role in the Industrial Revolution, the link between trade and technological innovation, trade between rich and poor countries and its effects on both economies, especially China, and the effects of trade deficits. Discussing the causes of the Industrial Revolution, Roberts said: “Trade makes things inexpensive for everybody.” He added that “when you make things cheaper for everybody, that frees up resources to make new things you wouldn’t have had before.”⁠[4]

In 2019 Hoover Institution Press published Roberts’s Gambling with Other People’s Money: How Perverse Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis.⁠[2]

In 2021 Roberts became president of Shalem College in Jerusalem.⁠[2][1]

In 2022 Portfolio published Roberts’s Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us.⁠[2]

Roberts is affiliated with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, whose profile lists him as a visiting fellow with expertise in economics, international trade and trade policy and as a participant in the research team “Socialism and Free Market Capitalism: The Human Prosperity Project”; his personal website describes him as the John and Jean De Nault Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution.⁠[2][1]

Personal website: https://russroberts.info/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]

X: Public account: https://x.com/EconTalker (opens in a new window).⁠[3][2]