He is a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Economics at the Mercatus Center, a faculty member with George Mason University's Capitol Hill Campus, and a Senior Fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC).
His main research interest are public choice, regulation and free-market environmentalism.
He has been president of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, member and chairman of the South Carolina State Board of Economic Advisors, and member and chairman of the Spartanburg Methodist College board of trustees.
He produces a quarterly newsletter on the economy distributed by George Mason University's Mercatus Center.
He was the first to put forth the story of the bootlegger and the Baptist, which describes how economic and ethical interests ally with one another to promote regulation, even though the two groups would never interact otherwise.