Libertarian women’s history month: Veronique de Rugy

Veronique de Rugy (May 20, 1970 – ) is a French born economist, living in the Arlington, Virginia suburb of Washington, DC.  She received her PhD from the Sorbonne in 2000; her dissertation analyzed the interaction of private and public tax revolts, the interactions and trade offs between tax evasion and tax limitation initiatives.  De Rugy has at times written on women and economic policy.  Speaking at a panel at the America’s Future Foundation a year ago on women outside the Democratic Party establishment, De Rugy made it clear she is not comfortable with conservatives or Republicans, and views her libertarianism as outside of the GOP.

In the 1990s she was an instructor at the University of Tours, and after receiving her PhD immigrated to the United States.  While preparing her thesis, she oversaw academic programs in France for the Institute for Humane Studies Europe. Eager to live in the United States,she was hired by the Cato Institute as an analyst, specializing in tax competition.  She then worked at the American Enterprise Institute where she specialized, among other topics, in matters of internal security, and bio-terrorism. In 2007, she joined the Mercatus Center at George Mason University where she is a senior research fellow and mainly deals with US budget and tax issues, as well as the US economy, the federal budget, homeland security, tax competition, and financial privacy. Her popular weekly charts, published by the Mercatus Center, address economic issues ranging from lessons on creating sustainable economic growth to the implications of government tax and fiscal policies. She has testified numerous times in front of Congress on the effects of fiscal stimulus, debt and deficits, and regulation on the economy.

De Rugy writes regular columns for reason magazine and the Washington Examiner, and she blogs about economics at National Review Online’s the Corner. Her charts, articles, and commentary have been featured in a wide range of media outlets, including the Reality Check segment on Bloomberg Television’s Street Smart, the New York Times’ Room for Debate, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, CNN International, Stossel, 20/20, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and Fox News.  Her worked has been discussed by writers Brad DeLong and Matthew Yglesias.  She has been attacked by statist polemicists like Paul Krugman and Jonathan Chait, some of whom tend to snarky and somewhat misogynist “criticism” like one writer at a so called “progressive” website:  “Veronique de Rugy is a Doctrix of The Economy, says the Sorbonne, which is weird because the impression Wonkette gets from reading her column is that she learned everything she knows about economics from a cardboard cutout of Ron Paul’s left nut.”

De Rugy has two children and is connected to reasonTV editor Nick Gillespie, with whom she sometimes collaborates on articles and projects.