Russell S. Sobel is a Visiting Scholar at the Initiative for Public Choice & Market Process in the Department of Economics & Finance at the College of Charleston. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Florida State University and is a member of the editorial boards for the journals Public Choice and the Journal of Entrepreneurship & Public Policy.

Sobol has been the James Clark Coffman Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies at West Virginia University (WVU) and is the recipient of numerous awards including the Southern Economic Journal Georgescu-Roegen Prize for Best Article of the Year for 2009, Atlantic Economic Journal Best Article of the Year Award for 1995, Journal of Private Enterprise Templeton Award for Best Article of the Year for 2005, 2008 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award for his book Unleashing Capitalism, Association of Private Enterprise Education Distinguished Scholar Award, and WVU College of Business & Economics Outstanding Researcher Award, 1997-98 & 2001-2002.

A contributor to twenty volumes and the author of over seventy articles in scholarly journals, his books include Growth and Variability in State Tax Revenue: An Anatomy of State Fiscal Crises (with Randall Holcombe), Economics: Private and Public Choice (with James Gwartney, Richard Stroup and David Macpherson), The Rule of Law: Perspectives on Legal and Judicial Reform in West Virginia, and Unleashing Capitalism: Why Prosperity Stops at the West Virginia Border and How to Fix It.

His research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, U.S. News and World Report, and The Economist, and he has appeared on CNBC, Fox News, CSPAN, NPR, and the CBS Evening News.