Industry Interviews: Individuals at Work, Middle East, Israel, Political Science, War, Peace, Violence
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As if Washington was not busy enough internationally, serious Korea analysts wonder if Northeast Asia could erupt in flames. North Korea is rewriting its constitution to drop plans for peaceful reunification with the Republic of Korea, declaring the South to be the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” Worse, Pyongyang celebrated the approach of .. MORE
Book Review, Kling's Corner
They have made us more risk averse and more set in our ways, more segregated, and they have sapped us of the pioneer spirit that made America the world’s most productive and innovative economy. Furthermore, all this has happened at a time when we may need American dynamism more than ever before. —Tyler Cowen, The .. MORE
Featured Article
We often hear that it’s a bad idea to take on large debts or even to get into debt at all. “Neither a borrower nor a lender be,” says Polonius to his son Laertes in one of the most famous passages from Hamlet. Polonius’s reason for avoiding borrowing is that it “dulls the edge of .. MORE
Liberty
Industry Interviews: Individuals at Work
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Central Planning
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Politics and Economics
Regulation and Subsidies
econtalk-podcast
The world of today would seem alien to someone living 30 years ago: people seduced by their screens in private and public and now AI blurring the lines between humans and the machine. Author and technologist Azeem Azhar chronicles the pace of change and asks whether the human experience can cope with that pace while .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
Author and poet Roya Hakakian talks about her latest book, A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hakakian was born in Iran and came to the United States as a 19 year-old, not speaking any English, and carrying only the things she could stuff in her backpack. She tells .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
In my previous post, I discussed why Star Trek’s Federation, despite its calls for peaceful diversity, fell just a bit short of their aim. In this post, I switch gears from culture and ideology to economics. In the Federation, most goods and services are produced via replication. The need for production and trade via the .. MORE
Central Planning
I posted recently about how some people try to use definitions to shortcut discussion about various issues. This is closely related to an idea Steven Pinker calls the “euphemism treadmill.” In short, this describes how people attempt to relabel ideas or concepts to improve their appeal. The process was once explained in the following way .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
The traditional interpretation pictures John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) as one of history’s paradigmatic transitional thinkers. Situated uncertainly in a no-man’s land between the rival intellectual traditions of nineteenth-century England, Mill in his writings displays no settled or coherent doctrine on social and political questions. In Mill’s work, the received view contends, competing sympathies and commitments .. MORE
Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He led the free-trade movement in France from its inception in 1840 until his untimely death in 1850. The first 45 years of his life were spent in preparation for five tremendously productive years writing in favor of freedom. Bastiat was the founder of the .. MORE
A book review of The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left, by Garett Jones.1 In January of 2018, President Donald Trump disparaged taking in immigrants from “[expletive] countries.” Equally dramatically, albeit more politely, in the conclusion to his recent book, The Culture Transplant,1 Garett .. MORE
A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the American Story by Wilfred McClay.1 American history isn’t what it used to be. Once it was common for a history textbook author to tell a good story. I remember as an eighth-grade student being horrified that my teacher was going to toss out a bunch .. MORE
VIDEO
Gary Becker (1930-2014) was one of the most original and pathbreaking economists of modern times. His 1992 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences was described as his “having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behavior.” Becker’s early work on discrimination led to his further work .. MORE
VIDEO
Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has long been recognized as one of our most important economic thinkers and a leader of the Chicago school of economics. He is the author of many books and articles in economics, including A Theory of the Consumption Function and A Monetary History .. 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.
Until the 1980s, property and liability insurance was a small cost of doing business. But the substantial expansion in what legally constitutes liability has greatly increased the cost of liability insurance for personal injuries. The plight of the U.S. private aircraft industry illustrates the extent of these liability costs. Although accident rates for general aviation .. MORE
One of the most popular definitions of recessions is that they are periods when real gross national product (GNP) has declined for at least two consecutive quarters. In 1990, real GNP declined between the third and fourth quarters and again between the fourth quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of 1991. Hence, there is .. MORE
The governance of corporations encompasses a wide range of checks and balances that affect the monitoring and incentives of firms’ management. Sound corporate governance is particularly important when a firm’s managers are not the owners. Without appropriate corporate governance, nonowner managers might not work very hard to maximize profits for shareholders and instead might spend .. MORE
-Arthur Seldon
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