Laurence Iannaccone was a senior scholar at the Mercatus Center. He is also the director of the George Mason University Center for the Economic Study of Religion and the Koch Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Prior to joining GMU's faculty in 2002, he was a professor of economics at Santa Clara University and spent two years at Stanford's Hoover Institution as a national fellow (1989/90) and visiting scholar (1996/97).

Dr. Iannaccone's research on the economics of religion has appeared in numerous journals and books, including the Journal of Political Economy,the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Literature, Economic Inquiry, the American Journal of Sociology, and the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

For copies of Dr. Iannaccone's papers or information about the economics of religion, see www.economicsofreligion.com.

Dr. Iannaccone earned a MS in Mathematics and PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago, and wrote his doctoral thesis on rational addiction and religious behavior.