Dean B. Stansel is an Associate Professor of Economics at Florida Gulf Coast University. Before coming to FGCU in 2004, he taught for two years at Eastern New Mexico University. He was born in Miami, Florida and also lived in Arcadia, Florida before leaving the state to attend Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he earned a B.A. in Economics and Political Science in 1991. After college, Stansel worked for seven years at the Cato Institute, a public policy research institute (think tank) in Washington, D.C. dedicated to the libertarian principles of individual liberty, limited government, the free market, and the rule of law. His research there focused on fiscal policy issues. While at Cato, he authored (or coauthored) more than 60 publications, including policy studies for the Cato Institute and op-ed articles for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Investor's Business Daily, and the Chicago Tribune. He also appeared on television and radio and testified before Congress and several state legislatures. After leaving Cato, Stansel earned a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia in 2002. While at George Mason, Stansel focused on the areas of public finance, public choice, political economy and contemporary history of thought. He studied under some of the nation's leading scholars in public choice economics (including Nobel Laureate James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, who was a member of his dissertation committee). His academic research has focused on the impact of competition between local governments on fiscal and economic outcomes, the relationship between the size of government and economic growth, state fiscal crises, and a variety of other issues in the areas of public economics and urban economics. Stansel's academic publications have appeared in the Journal of Urban Economics, Public Finance Review, Cato Journal, Journal of Housing Research, and the Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. He is married and has two young children.