Intellectual property is normally defined as the set of products protected under laws associated with copyright, patent, trademark, industrial design, and trade secrets. The U.S. Constitution expressly allows for intellectual property protection, albeit for a limited time, in the form of protection of “writings and discoveries” in order to promote “science and useful arts.” This […]
The Library of Economics and Liberty carries the popular Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, edited by David R. Henderson.
This highly acclaimed economics encyclopedia was first published in 1993 under the title The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. It features easy-to-read articles by over 150 top economists, including Nobel Prize winners, over 80 biographies of famous economists, and many tables and charts illustrating economics in action. With David R. Henderson’s permission and encouragement, the Econlib edition of this work includes links, additions, and corrections.
The growth of productivity—output per unit of input—is the fundamental determinant of the growth of a country’s material standard of living. The most commonly cited measures are output per worker and output per hour—measures of labor productivity. One cannot have sustained growth in output per person—the most general measure of a country’s material standard of […]
Throughout most of modern history, economic sanctions have preceded or accompanied war, often in the form of a naval blockade intended to weaken the enemy. Only when the horrors of World War I prompted President Woodrow Wilson to call for an alternative to armed conflict were economic sanctions seriously considered. (Wilson claimed that, by themselves, […]
When economists refer to the “opportunity cost” of a resource, they mean the value of the next-highest-valued alternative use of that resource. If, for example, you spend time and money going to a movie, you cannot spend that time at home reading a book, and you cannot spend the money on something else. If your […]
Governments have been trying to set maximum or minimum prices since ancient times. The Old Testament prohibited interest on loans to fellow Israelites; medieval governments fixed the maximum price of bread; and in recent years, governments in the United States have fixed the price of gasoline, the rent on apartments in New York City, and […]
Introduction Claudia D. Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist who has dug deep into often-obscure data sources. She won the 2023 Nobel Prize in economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.” One issue she has focused on is the gender gap, both in employment and in earnings. Indeed, […]
In 1988 Maurice Allais became the first French citizen to receive the Nobel Prize in economics. He won it for his contribution to the understanding of market behavior and the efficient use of resources. Allais also showed that his insights could be applied to help set efficient prices for state-owned monopolies, of which France […]