Book Review, Liberty Classics
Reflections from Europe
In the type of society we live in, two kinds of order are intertwined. One is driven by agreements, contracts and custom resulting in exchanges between individuals exercising the freedom of choice that the circumstances of each permit. Their circumstances are partly a result of the past, partly of their own doing. The other kind .. MORE
Book Review, Kling's Corner
“A decentralized order is possible. Indeed, it is natural for human societies to achieve such an order, rather than degenerate into the Hobbesian war of all against all.” Mark S. Weiner’s The Rule of the Clan1 makes a libertarian case for a strong central state. In it, he directly challenges what many libertarians currently believe. .. MORE
Book Review
A Book Review of The Decadent Society (How We Became the Victims of our Own Success), by Ross Douthat.1 New York Times columnist Ross Douthat brings us a breathless and demoralizing story of the decline of Western civilization. The book raises a few meaty points about the Zeitgeist, but it overextends its reach, attempting to .. MORE
Regulation
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Revealed Preference
Economics of Crime
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Political Economy
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
econtalk-extra
It seems we’ve all had a rough year and a half. For some of us, the experience of the pandemic has exacerbated vulnerabilities we already have. For others, new vulnerabilities emerged. In either case, mental health awareness has been brought increasingly into focus- if only for the difficulty in finding help today. In this powerful episode, .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
Russ Roberts, EconTalk Host The favorite EconTalk episodes for host Russ Roberts are when he and his guest have an unusually powerful connection such as his recent episode with Charles Duhigg, and the ones where he learns something mind-blowing, like Adam Mastroianni’s insight that you can’t reach the brain through the ears. Listen as Russ .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
I have frequently argued that China has the world’s largest economy, at least if measured in PPP terms. (Of course in per capita terms they are still only a middle-income country.) Others insist on using market exchange rates, which suggest the US economy is still significantly larger. Fair enough. But you need to be careful .. MORE
Economics of Crime
The housing sector in Irvine, California is booming, partly due to an inflow of investment from China. When I ask Chinese acquaintances where the money comes from, they suggest that it is transferred to the US through mysterious channels. Commenter Ahmed Fares directed me to a Daily Mail story that sheds light on one such .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
You face a choice. You must now decide whether to read this Preface, to read something else, to think silent thoughts, or perhaps to write a bit for yourself. The value that you place on the most attractive of these several alternatives is the cost that you must pay if you choose to read this .. MORE
In economics, just as in other sciences, it is by no means an exceptional occurrence to find that, no sooner has a “new” doctrine made its mark, than earlier, completely forgotten writers are discovered who perceived those newly accepted ideas with brilliant insight in their own day and set them down in their writings. In .. MORE
Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson,1 remains relevant for readers to this day. In print since its publication, the book has sold more than a million copies, has been translated into 10 languages, and in 2019 became inspiration for a new book, Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well and Why .. MORE
A Book Review of Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating, by Paul Oyer.1 Match.com, eHarmony, and OkCupid, it turns out, are no different from eBay or Monster.com. On all these sites, people come together trying to find matches. —Paul Oyer, Everything I Ever Needed to Know About .. MORE
VIDEO
A professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and a primary figure in Chicago School Economics and in the field of Law and Economics, Harold Demsetz has contributed original research on the theory of the firm, regulation in markets, industrial organization, antitrust policy, transaction costs, externalities, and .. MORE
VIDEO
The twentieth century witnessed the unparalleled expansion of government power over the lives and livelihoods of individuals. Much of this was the result of two devastating world wars and totalitarian ideologies that directly challenged individual liberty and the free institutions of the open society. Other forms of expansion in the provision of social welfare and .. 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.
[Editor’s note: this article was written in 1992.] To the outside world, the Soviet Union seemed little different in 1984 from what it had been for at least a decade. Except for a few skeptics, almost everyone agreed that the Soviet Union was the world’s second-largest economy and, if not the most powerful military force .. MORE
[Editor’s note: some of the data have changed since this article was written in 1992. The overall structure of the unemployment insurance, however, has remained intact.] The United States unemployment insurance program is intended to offset income lost by workers who lose their jobs as a result of employer cutbacks. The program, launched by .. MORE
As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, .. MORE
-Jean-Baptiste Say
-Frederic Bastiat Full Quote >>
-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>