Richard A. Williams

Richard Williams is a Senior Affiliated Scholar, the former Director of the Regulatory Studies Program, and the former Vice President of Policy Research at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is Chairman of the Board for the Center for Truth in Science and he does a weekly blog post. He is an expert in benefit-cost analysis and risk analysis, particularly associated with food safety and nutrition, and he has written a book, Fixing Food: An FDA Insider Reveals the Myths and the Solutions, about his research.

Williams has testified before the US Congress and addressed numerous international governments, including those of the United Kingdom, China, South Korea, Yugoslavia, and Australia. His media appearances have included NPR, Reuters, Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

Before joining the Mercatus Center, Williams was the director for social sciences at the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) where he worked for 27 years. He also was an adviser to the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and taught economics at Washington and Lee University. He is a US Army veteran who served in Vietnam.

Williams received his PhD and MA in economics from Virginia Tech and his BS in business administration from Old Dominion University.