As Director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for International Trade and Economics, Dr. Marc Miles directs research on the role of free markets and democracy in fostering economic growth around the world. He is also co-editor of the Center's annual "Index of Economic Freedom."Miles works with other think tanks and economic groups to inform members of Congress, the media, and the public about the relationship between free trade, economic freedom and prosperity.

Miles is an author and former tenured professor who has served as an executive at three economic and investment firms, is one of the original "supply side" economists, and has worked and co-authored a book with Arthur Laffer, inventor of the famed "Laffer Curve."

Before coming to Heritage, Miles was executive vice president of Laffer Associates, a San Diego firm founded by Arthur Laffer.Miles also was executive vice president and marketing director at Lehrman Bell Mueller Cannon Inc., an Arlington, Va.-based firm that specializes in economic, financial, and political advice.Before that, he was an executive vice president at Boston's H.C. Wainwright and Co. Economics, Inc.

Miles taught economics at Rutgers University in New Jersey as a tenured professor. He also taught courses at Brandeis University in Massachusetts.He also served as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he was responsible for forecasting the U.S. trade balance, and as an economic adviser to Thomas Kean, who successfully ran for governor of New Jersey in 1981.

Miles holds an economics degree from the London School of Economics and bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Chicago.His articles on the globalization of financial and commercial markets have appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

He also has written three books: "Beyond Monetarism" (Basic Books, 1984); "International Economics in an Integrated World" (co-authored with Laffer) (Scott, Foresman & Co., 1982); and "Devaluation, the Trade Balance and the Balance of Payments" (Marcel Dekker & Co., 1978).