Samuel Hammond (economist)

Samuel Hammond is a U.S.-based, Canadian-born policy analyst and non-resident fellow at the Niskanen Center. He is currently Senior Economist for the Foundation for American Innovation, a technology policy think tank that seeks to "advance a more perfect union between technology and the American republic."
Hammond's research and writing covers a wide range of U.S. domestic policy issues, from social insurance to artificial intelligence, and has been featured in outlets such as C-SPAN, the New York Times, and American Affairs Journal. In a 2023 profile for Time (magazine)|Time Magazine, American journalist, Molly Ball, cited Hammond's work on child allowances as evidence for the Niskanen Center being "The Most Interesting Think Tank In American Politics."
==Background and education==
Born in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Hammond holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Saint Mary's University, and Masters of Arts in economics from both Carleton University and George Mason University. His thesis (2014), "Medicaid expansion and the U.S. secular boom: the crowding out of religion's social insurance function," applied the economic theory of religion to explain recent trends in U.S. secularization.
According to Hammond, the shock of the September 11 attacks turned him into an avid "America watcher" who obsessively studied "the output of American think tanks" from a young age. The writing of libertarian and rationalist writers, such as Friedrich Hayek and Robin Hanson, were particularly formative to his interests in political philosophy and science. A self-described Hegelian and philosophical pragmatist, Hammond has since moved away from anti-government forms of libertarianism towards a neo-republican perspective that centers notions of pluralism and state capacity, citing the influence of Canadian philosophers Joseph Heath and Charles Taylor.
In addition to his professional writing, Hammond is the publisher of Second Best, a newsletter whose title references the theory of the second best in welfare economics.
==Public policy career==
After working as an economist for Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), a federal regional development agency, Hammond moved to Washington, D.C., in 2015 for a graduate research fellowship at the Mercatus Center. His research there focused on policy issues related to emerging technologies, such as consumer drone safety and regulatory barriers to civil supersonic aviation. 
In 2016, Hammond was recruited by the Niskanen Center to launch their Poverty and Welfare program. In their first report, Hammond drew upon libertarian and conservative perspectives to propose reforming the Child Tax Credit into a universal child benefit. The report influenced Republican Senator Marco Rubio's push for an expanded Child Tax Credit in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and subsequently informed the development of the American Family Act from Democratic Senators Michael Bennet and Sherrod Brown that same year. The American Family Act would go on to form the basis of the temporary Child Tax Credit expansion in American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which estimates found reduced U.S. child poverty by over 30 percent. Hammond's work on the Child Tax Credit also informed the Family Security Act from Utah Senator Mitt Romney, the first child allowance ever proposed by a Republican member of Congress.
In 2022, Niskanen's Poverty and Welfare program rebranded as the Social Policy team to reflect its expanding scope into housing, employment, health care, and innovation policy. In April, 2023, Hammond resigned as Niskanen's director of Social Policy to focus on the emerging policy debates around Artificial Intelligence as Senior Economist for the Foundation for American Innovation.
==See also==
* Niskanen Center
* Cost disease socialism
* Neoclassical liberalism
Category:Canadian economists
Category:People from Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia
Category:University of Saint Mary alumni
Category:Canadian people