GMU Faculty Member Heading Up Economics Team for Carson Presidential Campaign

Thomas Rustici, a faculty member at George Mason University in Fairfax, will head up the economics team for the campaign of Dr. Ben Carson, a Republican presidential candidate, his campaign manager told The Washington Post last week.

Carson is a retired neurosurgeon who is just behind GOP frontrunner Donald Trump in Iowa, according to a recent poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics. The poll showed Trump, a real estate mogul, with 23 percent of the vote and Carson with 18 percent. Carson has the highest favorability rating among the candidates, the poll showed.

Before he retired, Carson was the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins.

Rustici is the Assistant Professor of Economics and Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Economics at George Mason University. For 10 years, he taught at the Fund for American Studies located at Georgetown University earning the title of Freedom Professor of Economics.

Rustici received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from George Mason University in both Economics and Public Policy. His areas of specialization are economic theory, economic history and applied public policy. He has taught in eight colleges and universities around the world.

His publications include four textbooks: Lessons From the Great Depression, Microeconomics: A Free Market Approach (co-authored with Carrie Milton and Nathan Snow), Macroeconomics: The Monetary Foundations of the Macroeconomy Volume I and Macroeconomics: Past and Present Volume II (co-authored and edited with Jim Caton, Dima Shamoun and Theo Shamoun).

He was voted Professor of the Year by the George Mason University student body in 2000.

Rustici lives in Stafford Virginia with his wife and children.