Tyler Cowen is Holbert L. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University and also Director of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1987. His book The Great Stagnation: How America Ate the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better was a New York Times best-seller. In a recent poll by The Economist he was named one of the most influential economists of the last decade, and in 2011 Bloomberg BusinessWeek dubbed him "America's Hottest Economist." Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of its "Top 100 Global Thinkers" of 2011. He co-writes the Marginal Revolution blog with Alex Tabarrok, and he is the co-author with Alex of Modern Principles: Microeconomics and Modern Principles: Macroeconomics, two introductory texts.