Robert Higgs was born on 1 February 1944 and is an American economic historian and economist combining material from Public Choice, the New institutional economics, and the Austrian school of economics; and describes himself as a "libertarian anarchist" in political and legal theory and public policy.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,957 |
Robert Higgs has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,958 |
Robert Higgs has been a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute since September 1994.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,960 |
Robert Higgs has served at Editor at Large of The Independent Review since 2013, after having been Editor from 1995 to 2013.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,961 |
Robert Higgs aimed to demonstrate that contemporary models to explain the growth of government did not explain why growth historically occurred in spurts, rather than continuously.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,962 |
Robert Higgs theorized that most government growth occurred in response to real or imagined national "crises" and that after the crises, some, but rarely all, of the new interventions ceased.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,963 |
Robert Higgs cites economic crises and wars as the chief sources for the growth of government.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,964 |
Daniel McCarthy praised Robert Higgs and summarized his ratchet effect theory in a review of Against Leviathan that appeared in The American Conservative.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,965 |
Robert Higgs took special care in describing the "ratchet effect" – once a crisis has passed state power usually recedes again, but it rarely returns to its original levels; thus each emergency leaves the scope of government at least a little wider than before.
| FactSnippet No. 1,172,966 |