George Reisman
George Gerald Reisman (/ˈriːsmən/; born January 13, 1937) is an American economist and Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Government Against the Economy (1979), which was praised by both F. A. Hayek and Henry Hazlitt, and Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996). He is known as an advocate of free market or laissez-faire capitalism. Reisman was born in New York City and earned his Ph.D. from New York University under the direction of Ludwig von Mises, whose methodological work The Epistemological Problems of Economics Reisman translated from the German original into English. In the 1980s, with his wife, psychologist Edith Packer, J.D., Ph.D., he organized The Thomas Jefferson School of Philosophy, Economics, and Psychology, which held several conferences and seminars. Its lecturers included Leonard Peikoff, Edward Teller, Petr Beckmann, Hans Sennholz, Bernard Siegan, Anne Wortham, Robert Hessen, Allan Gotthelf, David Kelley, John Ridpath, Harry Binswanger, Edwin A. Locke, Walter E. Williams, Mary Ann Sures, Andrew Bernstein and Peter Schwartz. Attendees of these conferences include later Objectivist writers Tara Smith and Lindsay Perigo. Reisman was a student of Ayn Rand, whose influence on his thought and work is at least as great as that of his mentor Mises. He identifies himself as an Objectivist, though he is no longer affiliated with the Ayn Rand Institute due to a falling out with some of its senior members.