Bryan Caplan, health insurance, needs versus wants, pet insurance
Book Review
A Book Review of Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be, by Diane Coyle.1 Economics has arguably been under greater scrutiny than ever before. Its ontological premises, methodological postulates, conceptual insights, and analytical techniques are under intense appraisal within the academy, with social scientists from non-economic disciplines and even heterodox economists .. MORE
Article
Harvard Economics wunderkind Raj Chetty hopes to change the way students are introduced to economics. Chetty wants there to be more analysis of data and less attention to economic theory. As described by Dylan Matthews writing for Vox, “If Chetty is an advocate for anything, it’s for the notion that economics is an empirical discipline, .. MORE
Article
Economics in the hands of its masters is an expert critique of rule by expertise. And even among its masters, there are many differing visions of the role of economics. —Pete Boettke Robert Skidelsky wrote a magisterial three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes.1 It is important to note that he titled the second volume The .. MORE
Finance
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Business Economics
Economics of Health Care
Business Cycles
Economic Education
History
Unintended Consequences
Cross-country Comparisons
Economic Growth
econtalk-podcast
Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib spent much of his childhood in Gaza before becoming an American citizen. He has lost dozens of family members and both his childhood homes in Israel’s war in Gaza. But he hasn’t lost hope for peace and the future of the Palestinian people. Listen as he describes the reality of life in Gaza .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
Called “a poem in clockwork,” the self-winding Breguet watch made for Marie Antoinette was meant to be the most beautiful example of mechanical art in the world. Yet when she was imprisoned in the Tour du Temple, she wanted only a simple watch that would mark the passing of the hours until her meeting with .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
Last year, I did a post discussing the US ability to attract global talent to our high tech industries. In April, I did a post discussing how immigration might have contributed to the US having a per capita GDP that is somewhat higher than in other developed economies. Recently, I came across a few more .. MORE
International Trade
The June 15 issue of The Economist had the following headline and subhead: America’s assassination attempt on Huawei is backfiring The company is growing stronger—and less vulnerable But if the allusion to Nietzsche was ill-timed, the story itself contains some important insights: America’s assault continues. In May, for instance, regulators revoked a special permit allowing .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
The main purpose of the present volume is to consider and illustrate some questions of principle in the controversy on free trade and protection. The three chapters which constitute Part I state these questions and summarize the main conclusions. The succeeding Parts give illustrations and verifications drawn from the history of several industries,—sugar, iron and .. MORE
Thomas Mackay (1849-1912) was a successful English wine merchant who retired early from business so he could devote himself entirely to the study of economic issues such as the Poor Laws, growing state intervention in the economy, and the rise of socialism. Mackay was asked by the individualist and laissez-faire lobby group, the Liberty and .. MORE
A Book Review of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, by Friedrich A. Hayek. Jeremy Shearmur, editor.1 Friedrich Hayek’s trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty, published in three separate volumes in 1973, 1976, and 1979, was recently republished in a single book under the careful editorship of Jeremy Shearmur. The last volume of the original trilogy2 covers Chapters .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War, by Ludwig von Mises. Liberty Fund.1 Classical liberalism “had a good war.” In 1944, two seminal books in this tradition of thought were published. The first of these was F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, the other Omnipotent .. MORE
VIDEO
Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Universally respected as one of the founders of the economics of public choice, he is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics, and economic .. MORE
VIDEO
Recognized as one of the most influential voices in the areas of market structure, the theory of the firm, law and economics, resource unemployment, and monetary theory and policy, in this 2001 interview, Armen Alchian (1914-2013) outlines the “UCLA tradition” of economics which he founded and explores the many unanticipated consequences of self-seeking individual behavior. .. MORE
Econlib Videos
Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time
The Reading Lists by Topic pages contain some suggested readings organized by topic, including materials available on Econlib. Brief reviews or descriptions are included for many items.
Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.
These free resources are appropriate for teachers of high school and AP economics, social studies, and history classes. They are also appropriate for interested students, home schoolers, and newcomers to the topic of economics.
“ Rent seeking” is one of the most important insights in the last fifty years of economics and, unfortunately, one of the most inappropriately labeled. Gordon Tullock originated the idea in 1967, and Anne Krueger introduced the label in 1974. The idea is simple but powerful. People are said to seek rents when they try .. MORE
Interest is the price people pay to have resources now rather than later. Resources, of course, can be anything from college tuition to a big-screen TV. Interest is conventionally expressed as a percentage rate for a period of one year. If borrowers (those who want resources now) can obtain the resources from lenders (those who .. MORE
“ Privatization” is an umbrella term covering several distinct types of transactions. Broadly speaking, it means the shift of some or all of the responsibility for a function from government to the private sector. The term has most commonly been applied to the divestiture, by sale or long-term lease, of a state-owned enterprise to private .. MORE
-Israel Kirzner
-Adam Smith Full Quote >>
-Leonard E. Read Full Quote >>