Robert L. Bradley Jr. was an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute and of the Competitive Enterprise Institute; a visiting fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs in London; and a senior research fellow of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. He is the founder and chief executive officer of the Institute for Energy Research, a 501(c) 3 educational foundation with offices in Washington, D.C. and Houston. Bradley’s public-policy approach combines an understanding of the historical record with market-process economics and libertarian social theory.
Bradley is author, most recently, of Enron Ascending: The Forgotten Years, 1984–1996, the first classical-liberal treatise of a business firm in market and political action. The third book of his tetralogy on political capitalism, Enron Ascending follows Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, and Capitalism at Work: Business, Government, and Energy, which applies the capitalist worldview to corporate and energy controversies. Bradley’s primer, Energy: The Master Resource, is the inspiration for the free-market energy blog, www.masterresource.org.
Bradley, who holds a BA and MA in economics and a PhD in political economy, received the Julian L. Simon Memorial award in 2002 for his work on free market approaches to energy sustainability.