Formerly, he was the Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics, Professor of Economics, and executive director of the Eudaimonia Institute[2] at Wake Forest University.

He is also a Senior Scholar[3] at The Fund for American Studies in Washington, D.C., a Research Professor in the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom and in the Philosophy Department at the University of Arizona,[4] a Visitor of Ralston College,[5] a Research Fellow[6] for the Independent Institute in California, a director[7] of Ethics and Economics Education of New England, and a Senior Scholar[8] at the Fraser Institute.

Otteson lectures widely on Adam Smith, classical liberalism, political economy, business ethics, and related issues, including in Canada, Chile, China, Germany, Guatemala, Hong Kong, and Scotland.

In 2005, Otteson won a prize from the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Order, sponsored by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.

Actual Ethics defends a classical liberal political order, based on a fusion of Kantian and Aristotelian moral themes.

After developing and defending the moral basis of the position, he goes on to show how a classical liberal state would address several vexing moral and political issues, including wealth and poverty, affirmative action, same-sex marriage and adoption, speech codes, public education, and the treatment of animals.

His most recent books are the edited collection What Adam Smith Knew and the manuscript The End of Socialism, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014.

In 2010-'12, Otteson appeared several times on Andrew Napolitano's one-time Fox Business News television program, "Freedom Watch."