The following bio is that of an event speaker or guest author. This person is not directly affiliated with the John Locke Foundation.

In June 2019 Roy Cordato retired from his full time position as Senior Economist and Resident Scholar at the John Locke Foundation and currently holds the position of Senior Economist Emeritus at the Foundation. From January 2001 to March 2017, he served as JLF’s first Vice President for Research.

In addition to his emeritus position at JLF, Cordato holds the title of Lecturer at the School of Public and International Affairs at NC State University where he works with the Free Societies Project as faculty advisor for The Society for Politics, Economics, and the Law and The Austrian Economics Forum. Between September 2003 and May 2018, he was adjunct faculty in the Department of Economics at NC State University where, in addition to his work as advisor to the aforementioned student groups, he taught “Political Economy of the Market Process,” a course that he designed. Cordato also currently serves as Editor of Political Economy in the Carolinas, an interdisciplinary academic journal published by Classical Liberals in the Carolinas.

From 1993 to 2000, Cordato served as the Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C. From 1987 to 1993 he was Senior Economist at the Institute for Research on the Economics
of Taxation (IRET) in Washington, D.C. He has served as full-time economics faculty at the University of Hartford and at Auburn University and as adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. His publications include a 1992 book, Welfare Economics and Externalities in an Open Ended Universe (Kluwer Academic Publishers republished in 2007 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute).

His articles have appeared in a number
of economics journals and law reviews in addition to The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily,The Journal of Commerce, The Congressional Record, The Orange County Register, The Freeman, Human Events, National Review Online, The Washington Examiner, Tax Notes and many other newspapers and magazines. In 2000 he received the Freedoms Foundation’s Leavey Award in Free Enterprise Education. He is also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society and former executive board member of The Association of Private Enterprise Education. Cordato holds an M.A. in urban and regional economics from the University of Hartford and a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He also holds a Bachelors of Music Education from the Hartt School of Music.