Art Carden

Art Carden is Margaret Gage Bush Distinguished Professor of Economics at Samford University’s Brock School of Business. He is also a Senior Fellow with the American Institute for Economic Research, a Research Fellow with the Independent Institute, and co-editor of the Southern Economic Journal. His research on mass-market retailers, economic history, and the history of economic ideas has appeared in journals like the Southern Economic Journal, Journal of Urban Economics, Public Choice, and Contemporary Economic Policy. He is a contributor to Forbes.com, and his commentaries and other articles have appeared in USA Today, Productive!, and many other outlets. He earned a BS and MA from the University of Alabama and an AM and PhD from Washington University in Saint Louis. Before joining the faculty at Samford, Art taught economics at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. His first book, co-authored with Deirdre McCloskey and titled Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2020, and his second book, titled Strangers With Candy: Observations from the Ordinary Business of Life, was published by the Libertarian Christian Institute in 2023. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, their three children, and a hyperactive black lab named Lucy.