Garett Jones
BB&T
Professor for the Study of Capitalism
and
Assistant
Professor
Center for Study of Public
Choice
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As a
macroeconomist, I investigate both long-term economic growth and short-term
business cycles. My current research explores why IQ and other cognitive
skills appear to matter more for nations than for individuals.
For example: A
two standard deviation rise in an individual person’s IQ predicts only about a
30% increase in her wage. But the same rise in a country’s average IQ
score predicts a 700% increase in the average wage in that country. I
want to understand why IQ appears to have such a large social multiplier.
The story is much
the same for math and science scores: A person’s individual score predicts
little about how she’ll do in the job market, but the richest and
fastest-growing countries in the world tend to do much better on math and
science tests. If the IQ multiplier is even half as large as it appears
to be, then health, nutrition, and education policies in developing countries
should be targeted at raising the brain health of the world’s poorest
citizens.
An even more
important implication of my research is that low-skilled
immigrants should be allowed to migrate to the world’s richest countries:
Low-skilled immigrants have little or no net effect on the wages of the
citizens of rich countries, but their lives massively improve when they
immigrate to these countries.
In the past, I’ve
worked on Capitol Hill and I’ve studied the monetary transmission
mechanism. I speak on policy topics regularly via Mercatus’s Capitol Hill Campus program and in other
forums. Recent media include Forbes.com, Fortune.com, Wisconsin Public
Radio, and CNN.com.
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Selected
Working Papers
The O-Ring
Sector and the Foolproof Sector: An explanation for cross-country income
differences
(Presented at
American Economic Association meetings, January 2009)
Cognitive
Ability and Technology Diffusion: An empirical test
(Presented at
American Economic Association meetings, January 2008)
IQ in the
Production Function: Evidence from immigrant earnings
(Forthcoming, Economic
Inquiry)
Are Smarter
Groups More Cooperative? Evidence from repeated prisoners’ dilemma
experiments, 1959-2003
(Published in Journal
of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2008)
Dynamic IS
Curves With and Without Money: An international comparison
(Published in Journal
of International Money and Finance, 2008)
On Money and
Output: Is money redundant?
(Published in Journal
of Monetary Economics, 2007)
Intelligence,
Education, and Economic Growth: A Bayesian averaging of classical estimates
(BACE) approach
(Published in Journal
of Economic Growth, March 2006)
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Current
Teaching: Fall 2009
Syllabus for Economics 104:
Principles of Macroeconomics
Syllabus for Economics 630:
M.A. Mathematical Economics
(All course
materials are on Blackboard)
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Past
Teaching
Syllabus for
Graduate Monetary Economics
Syllabus for Ph.D.
Macroeconomics I
Syllabus for M.A.
Mathematical Economics
Syllabus for M.A.
Macroeconomics
Syllabus for M.A.
Economic Growth
Syllabus for M.A. Time
Series Econometrics
Syllabus for
Undergraduate Public Choice
Syllabus for
Undergraduate Economic Methodology
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Additional Writings
and Presentations
The Great
Recession
(Slide presentation for George Mason University’s inaugural Alumni
Weekend, October 2009)
The European
Economy in 2020
(Slide
presentation to NATO-bound U.S. military officers at National Defense
University, August 2009)
Economics of
the Geithner Plans
(Slide
presentation for the Mercatus Center’s Capitol Hill
Campus series, April 2009)
Tax 101
(Slide
presentation for the Mercatus Center’s Capitol Hill
Campus series, March 2009)
Artificial
Intelligence and Economic Growth: A few finger-exercises
(January 2009: A
response to a discussion between Robin Hanson and Eliezer
Yudkowsky at Overcoming Bias)
Imitate FDR’s
Treasury Secretary: Bankruptcy not Bailouts
(November 2008:
Published in U.S. Exchequer, pages 45-46)
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Miscellany
An old photo
of me at the birthplace of a leading
driver of U.S. productivity.
What I did in the
summer of 2008: I took this photo of my
brothers in the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne, Yosemite National Park.
A 2006 photo of me
backpacking in the Mineral King section of Sequoia National Park.
A macroeconomic revolution all in one photograph.
A photo of me in my office in Carow Hall.
A TV series you really ought to watch.
And another: The first sitcom inspired by public choice theory.
Another kind of spontaneous order.
