Daniel J. Smith is the Director of the Political Economy Research Institute and Professor of Economics at the Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University. Dan is the North American Co-Editor of The Review of Austrian Economics, the Senior Fellow for Fiscal and Regulatory Policy at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, and also serves on the Board of Scholars of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Dan is a past president of the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics and previously was the BB&T Professor of Economic Freedom in the Manuel H. Johnson Center at Troy University and taught at Vietnam National University, Hanoi, through a partnership with Troy University. 

Dan specializes in history of economic thought (including F. A. Hayek and Walter Lippmann) and modern and historical political economy & public choice (including regulation, democracy, monetary institutions, public pensions, and term limits). He has been published in many scholarly journals, including Public Choice, Southern Economic Journal, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, and History of Political Economy. Dan co-authored Money and the Rule of Law: Generality and Predictability in Monetary Institutions (Cambridge University Press), written with Peter J. Boettke and Alexander W. Salter, and The Political Economy of Public Pensions (Cambridge University Press - Elements Series in Austrian Economics), written with Eileen Norcross. 

Smith has published over one hundred popular publications in national and regional outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and the Tennessean, and has been done media interviews and public lectures across the nation. Daniel received his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University and a B.B.A. in economics and finance from Northwood University.