Dean Stansel is a Research Associate Professor at the O’Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He earned his B.A. in economics (with honors) and politics from Wake Forest University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. Before entering academia, Prof. Stansel worked for seven years at the Cato Institute, a public-policy research organization in Washington, D.C., where he produced over 60 publications on fiscal policy issues. In addition to his work on Economic Freedom of North America, he is sole author of an index of economic freedom for US metropolitan areas, as well as the author of numerous academic journal articles on a variety of issues in public finance and urban economics. Prof. Stansel’s research has been discussed in many publications including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Atlanta Journal-Constitution; and his commentaries have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, and Chicago Tribune, among others. He was selected in 2011 by the Economic Freedom Project to help publicize the findings of the various economic freedom reports, and the virtues of economic freedom in general, through a variety of media interviews (about 75 a year).