Contributors

For the last two years, Arnold Kling has served as an adjunct member of George Mason University's Financial Markets Working Group. Kling, 56, got his start as an economist and researcher at the Congressional Budget Office and the Federal Reserve Board. In "Turning Guns to Butter" (page 44), he explains how the U.S. economy thrived after World War II despite dramatic cuts in government spending that Keynesians thought would be disastrous. Although his career began in the public sector, Kling is no stranger to the business world. In 1994 he started one of the very first online companies, homefair.com, which he sold near the height of the Internet bubble. His advice to young entreprenuers: "If you ever get a chance to sell an Internet business in 1999, take it."

Maurice McTigue's "The New Zealand Miracle" (page 45) explains how his South Pacific nation managed to shrink a swollen government in the 1980s. McTigue, 69, had a firsthand view of the reform process as a cabinet minister, ambassador, and member of parliament. Now a resident of Fairfax Country, Virginia, he says New Zealand has come a long way in the last three decades. "Before we started reforming, the country had a very socialist streak," he recalls. But today, "if I go back to New Zealand and talk to farmers, they can't actually remember what subsidies were."

In 1970 Contributing Editor David R. Henderson took a year off from school to learn graduate-level economics, spending roughly four hours a day reading journal articles and writing fan letters to economic luminaries such as Gary Becker, James Buchanan, and H. Gregg Lewis. By 1984 he was on the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he still teaches economics. Henderson, 59, is a former Canadian, and in "If Canada Can Do It…" (page 47) he shares lessons from his former nation's experience with cutting government. Asked what virtues Canada has that the U.S. lacks, Henderson says, "Canadians don't tend to have the view that if something outrageous happens almost anywhere in the world, their government has the right to intervene."