Alex Nowrasteh is the director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute. He is the coauthor (with Benjamin Powell) of the book Wretched Refuse? The Political Economy of Immigration and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which is the first book on how economic institutions in receiving countries adjust to immigration. He is also the coauthor (with Mark S. Krikorian) of the booklet Open Immigration: Yea and Nay (Encounter Broadsides, 2014) and has contributed numerous book chapters about immigration to various edited volumes.

He is a native of Southern California and received a BA in economics from George Mason University and an MS in economic history from the London School of Economics.