Before joining Cato, Palmer was an H. B. Earhart Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford University, and a vice president of the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University. He frequently lectures in North America, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, India, Asia, and the Middle East on political science, public choice, civil society, and the moral, legal, and historical foundations of individual rights.
He has published reviews and articles on politics and morality in scholarly journals, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Critical Review, Constitutional Political Economy, and Isonomia Quarterly, as well as in publications such as Slate, the Unpopulist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Die Welt, Caixing, Al Hayat, the Washington Post, Global Policy, Global Citizenship Review, and the Spectator of London. His most recent books are Institutions and Economic Development: Markets, Ideas, and Bottom-Up Change (with Bryan Cheang, 2023), Development with Dignity: Self-Determination, Localization, and the End to Poverty (with Matt Warner, 2022) and Truth and Governance: Religious and Secular Views (co-edited with William Galston, 2021). He is the author of Realizing Freedom: Libertarian Theory, History, and Practice (expanded edition 2014) and the editor of The Morality of Capitalism (2011), After the Welfare State (2012), Why Liberty (2013), and Peace, Love, & Liberty (2014). Palmer received his BA in liberal arts from St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland; his MA in philosophy from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC; and his doctorate in politics from Oxford University.
