Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Berry College
Dr. Phillip W. Magness is an economic historian specializing in the “long” 19th century United States, as well as general macroeconomic trends. He is a leading expert on black colonization during the Civil War era, and its sometimes-strained relationship with the African-American emigrationist movement of the same period. He studies the political economy of slavery in the Atlantic world, and particularly its relationship to public policy. His broader research extends to the economic history of the United States and includes historical tariff policy, the federal income tax, and the relationship between taxation and wealth inequality. He also researches the history and political economy of higher education and the American university system.
Magness’ research has appeared in multiple scholarly and popular venues, including the Journal of the Early Republic, the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Slavery & Abolition, Constitutional Political Economy, the Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Supreme Court History, and Liberal Education.
His popular press writings have appeared in Newsweek, Britannica.com, the History News Network, and the New York Times. He has fact-checked Politifact, discussed the economics of higher education on NPR’s Marketplace, and presented on Black Abolitionism for C-Span’s American History TV.
Magness holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He obtained his MPP and Ph.D. from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, specializing in policy history. He has taught Public Policy at George Mason University and American University in the Washington, D.C. region. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Berry College for the 2017-18 academic term.
