About Bastiat’s Window
Robert Graboyes is an economist, journalist, musician/composer, and award-winning professor who writes on the seen and the unseen in economics, ethics, health, technology, and culture. Frédéric Bastiat was a 19th Century economist whose Parable of the Broken Window crystallized the distinction between the seen and the unseen in economics and in life. In 2014, Graboyes received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize for Journalism. In announcing the award, the founder of the prize said: “Bob Graboyes’ concise, witty explanations of the power of technology and dangers of government interference perfectly exemplified the essence of the prize; he is a modern day Bastiat.”
Bastiat’s Window draws material from various facets of Graboyes’s background. He grew up in the Jim Crow-era South; played and wrote music from an early age; studied literature in college; developed economic expertise in international finance, healthcare, and technology; traveled professionally in Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia. He has a powerful love of film, architecture, mathematics, history, science, art, and literature.
Bastiat’s Window’s healthcare articles have covered, medical prices, occupational regulation, eugenics, the politicization of medicine, artificial intelligence, and medical hubris. Other pieces have dealt with censorship, freedom, presidential history, the gig economy, effective altruism, and his travels as an economist in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Scotland. More eclectic pieces have covered the anthems of America’s eight (nine?) uniformed services, the peculiarly American story of paw-paw trees, the case for awarding the Nobel Literature Prize to Vince Gilligan, and the Worst Best Movie of All Time.
His pre-Substack writings covered myriad topics. These included health insurance, eugenics, telehealth, Deaf culture, the Notre Dame fire, solar eclipses, regional aviation, healthcare prices, medical drones, 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, technological innovation, medical ethics, the electoral college, the gig economy, inflation, autism, political polarization, film history, numismatics, travel, physician licensure, and electronic health records.
Graboyes has worked at a broad array of institutions. He has been senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; senior healthcare advisor at the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB); regional economist/director of education at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond; Sub-Saharan Africa economist for Chase Manhattan Bank; and small-town newspaper reporter. Twice, he was visiting healthcare scholar in the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Over 19 years, he taught at five universities. He was a full-time professor of economics at the University of Richmond, as well as the university’s foreign language immersion program. He taught healthcare economics part-time at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Virginia, the George Washington University, and George Mason University. He earned his PhD in Economics from Columbia University; master’s degrees from Columbia, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the College of William and Mary; and a bachelor’s from the University of Virginia. He won four professor-of-the-year awards at three universities.
His YouTube channel features his musical performances and compositions. He is conversant in French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Bob lives in Alexandria, VA, with his wife, Alanna.
