Public Biography
Gerald K. Vanderbeek is an opinion columnist for The New York Time5, where he writes “The Free Exchange,” a twice-weekly column on economics, governance, and the application of market principles to public life. He has written the column since 2018.
Mr. Vanderbeek holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from George Mason University. He was previously a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a visiting scholar at the Mercatus Center, where he authored several widely cited papers on deregulation, including “Toward a Market-Based Framework for Familial Resource Allocation” and “The Tragedy of the Commons: Why Your Neighbor’s Lawn Is a Government Failure.”
Before entering opinion journalism, Mr. Vanderbeek worked briefly as an economic policy adviser in the Montana state legislature, where he proposed a bill to replace public libraries with a voucher system for private book-lending cooperatives. The bill did not advance out of committee.
He is the author of two books: Unregulate: A Manifesto for Voluntary Society (Liberty Press, 2016) and The Price of Everything: What Markets Know That You Don’t (Encounter Books, 2022). He lives in McLean, Virginia, and describes his hobbies as “contract law and hiking, in that order.”
Selected Columns
- “The Case for Competitive Bidding in Marriage” (March 2025)
- “Your Thermostat Is a Command Economy” (January 2026)
- “Why Weather Forecasting Should Be Left to the Private Sector” (November 2025)