Garett Jones is an American economist and author. His research pertains to the fields of

macroeconomics Macroeconomics (from the Greek prefix ''makro-'' meaning "large" + ''economics'') is a branch of economics dealing with performance, structure, behavior, and decision-making of an economy as a whole. For example, using interest rates, taxes, and ...

monetary policy Monetary policy is the policy adopted by the monetary authority of a nation to control either the interest rate payable for very short-term borrowing (borrowing by banks from each other to meet their short-term needs) or the money supply, often a ...

, IQ in relation to

productivity Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...

, short-term

business cycle Business cycles are intervals of Economic expansion, expansion followed by recession in economic activity. These changes have implications for the welfare of the broad population as well as for private institutions. Typically business cycles are ...

s, and

economic development In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and o ...

. He is an

associate professor Associate professor is an academic title with two principal meanings: in the North American system and that of the ''Commonwealth system''. Overview In the ''North American system'', used in the United States and many other countries, it is a ...

George Mason University George Mason University (George Mason, Mason, or GMU) is a public research university in Fairfax County, Virginia with an independent City of Fairfax, Virginia postal address in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area. The university was origin ...

and the

BB&T BB&T Corporation (previously known as the Branch Banking and Trust Company) was one of the largest banking and financial services firms in the United States, based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In 2019, BB&T announced its intentions to merge ...

Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the

Mercatus Center The Mercatus Center is an American Libertarianism in the United States, libertarian, free-market-oriented non-profit think tank. Located at George Mason University and directed by the American economist Tyler Cowen, the Mercatus Center works with ...

Early life and education

Jones was raised as a

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...

but left the church as a young adult. His grandmother was Jewish. He completed a B.A. in

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

with a minor in

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...

from

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

in 1992. He did an M.P.A. in public affairs at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1993, followed by an M.A. in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1994. Jones completed a Ph.D. in economics at the

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

in 2000.

Academic career

After holding a number of visiting scholar and other academic positions, Jones joined the faculty of

in 2007. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics.

Research on IQ and its role in productivity and economic growth

Jones started his research on IQ in a paper with Joel Schneider in 2006 that argued that IQ is a

statistically significant In statistical hypothesis testing, a result has statistical significance when it is very unlikely to have occurred given the null hypothesis (simply by chance alone). More precisely, a study's defined significance level, denoted by \alpha, is the p ...

explanatory variable Dependent and independent variables are variables in mathematical modeling, statistical modeling and experimental sciences. Dependent variables receive this name because, in an experiment, their values are studied under the supposition or deman ...

of economic growth, thus agreeing broadly with the thesis advanced by

Richard Lynn Richard Lynn (born 20 February 1930) is a controversial English psychologist and author. He is a former professor emeritus of psychology at Ulster University, having had the title withdrawn by the university in 2018. He is former assistant edit ...

and

Tatu Vanhanen Tatu Vanhanen (17 April 1929 – 22 August 2015) was a Finnish political scientist, sociologist, and writer. He was a professor of political science at the University of Tampere in Tampere, Finland. Vanhanen was a coauthor with Richard Lynn of ''I ...

in their book '' IQ and the Wealth of Nations.'' The chief observation that Jones made, and popularized, is that national IQs have much greater predictive power for individual earnings than individual IQ. Jones' further research has been on identifying the causal mechanisms by which IQ might affect productivity and economic growth at a national level. One mechanism posited by Jones is that smarter groups tend to be better at arriving at and enforcing norms of cooperation. Jones has used laboratory experiments involving repeated prisoner's dilemma, combined with the

SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...

scores of participants, to offer support for this hypothesis. He has also suggested that patience and

delayed gratification Delayed gratification, or deferred gratification, is the resistance to the temptation of an immediate pleasure in the hope of obtaining a valuable and long-lasting reward in the long-term. In other words, delayed gratification describes the pro ...

might offer an explanation. Jones has argued that certain sectors requiring very high quality work and with very low error-tolerance can only exist and thrive given access to a high-IQ population, because in such sectors, it is not possible to replace a single high-IQ worker by multiple low-IQ workers and achieve the same output. Jones informally dubs such sectors "O-Ring sectors", in contrast to "foolproof sectors", where a larger workforce of people with lower productivity can produce the same output as a smaller workforce of people with high productivity. Jones offers a summary of his and others' research on the relationship between IQ and national productivity in an article for ''

The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics'' (2018), 3rd ed., is a twenty-volume reference work on economics published by Palgrave Macmillan. It contains around 3,000 entries, including many classic essays from the original Inglis Palgrave Diction ...

''.

Research on money

Some of Jones' research has focused on the role of money,

, and mechanisms to reduce the risk of financial crisis.

Books

Jones wrote the book '' Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own'', which builds on his research on the relationship between IQ and national productivity. It was released in November 2015 by

Stanford University Press Stanford University Press (SUP) is the publishing house of Stanford University. It is one of the oldest academic presses in the United States and the first university press to be established on the West Coast. It was among the presses officially ...

. He was the editor of the book ''Banking Crises'' (2016), produced for ''

''. His book ''10% Less Democracy: How Less Voting Could Mean Better Governance'' was published on February 7, 2020. It is based on a 2015 presentation. On November 15, 2022, Jones published ''The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left''.

Media appearances

Jones was a guest blogger for ''EconLog'' from September 2012 to April 2013. He has given his opinion on macroeconomic policy and financial crises on

CNBC CNBC (formerly Consumer News and Business Channel) is an American basic cable business news channel. It provides business news programming on weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., Eastern Time, while broadcasting talk sho ...

and in various media clippings.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Garett Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Academic journal editors American economics writers Economists from California Brigham Young University alumni Cornell University alumni George Mason University alumni George Mason University faculty Intelligence researchers Macroeconomists Race and intelligence controversy University of California, Berkeley alumni University of California, San Diego alumni