Nobel laureate Vernon Smith, a George Mason University professor emeritus in the Department of Economics, was recently awarded the 2025 Faith & Freedom Award from the Acton Institute.
The institute, a think-tank based out of Michigan where Smith has served as a lecturer, honored him last fall for his efforts as a trailblazing economist and a “steadfast voice for liberty.”
Smith, 99, served as a professor of economics and law at George Mason where he also was a fellow at the Mercatus Center and founded the university’s Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Sciences. During his time at George Mason, he received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 for his groundbreaking research into experimental economics.
Smith, who currently serves as a professor of economics and law at Chapman University in California, has authored or co-authored more than 200 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics, and experimental economics.
“Vernon, in my view, has been the most influential, certainly experimental economist, behavioral economist ever,” George Mason economics professor and department chair Daniel Houser said. “Experimental economics allows us to meet people where they are. There is not just one way that a person acts or behaves in a market. They are going to act or behave differently depending on the context of the market.”
February 17, 2026