User:Will Wilkinson

I am a policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC, where I work on a wide range of issues including social security reform, the policy-relevance of happiness research, and issues surrounding inequality and social and economic mobility.

My areas of academic interest are political philosophy, metaethics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of social science. In particular, I am interested in the relationship between the cognitive sciences (especially questions of moral representation and moral development, and evolutinary psychology) and the social sciences (especially rational choice theory, behavioral economics, and the new institutionalism) to contractarian moral and political theory.

I studied philosophy at the Ph.D. level at the University of Maryland, and have an M.A. in philosophy from Northern Illinois University. My B.A. is from the University of Northern Iowa, in studio art and the philosophy and history of art.

Prior to Cato, I was Academic Coordinator of the Social Change Project and the Global Prosperity Iniative at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before working at Mercatus, I was a program director at the Institute for Humane Studies. And Before IHS, I worked as a linguist at AnswerLogic, a now-defunct start-up.

My personal website is here.