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Shoppers are filling their carts, both literally and digitally, with last-minute gifts. One tempting purchase, whether for gifting or for showing up in style at a holiday sweater party, is ultra-cheap clothing from Shein. Like many around the world, the French hunt for deals in December. During a recent interview with journalist Thomas Mahler, I .. MORE
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Microeconomics
With the holidays upon us, what could be better than Christmas movies? And Christmas songs? And Christmas movies with great Christmas songs, like “Silver and Gold” as sung by Burl Ives in Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer? And of course, there’s the profit-seeking entrepreneur-prospector, Yukon Cornelius, obsessed with finding silver and gold. If silver and gold .. MORE
Microeconomics
Shoppers are filling their carts, both literally and digitally, with last-minute gifts. One tempting purchase, whether for gifting or for showing up in style at a holiday sweater party, is ultra-cheap clothing from Shein. Like many around the world, the French hunt for deals in December. During a recent interview with journalist Thomas Mahler, I .. MORE
Tariffs
From the editors: We have an in-depth discussion about tariffs across two Liberty Fund sites today. EconLog contributor David Hebert has a piece on the consequences of America’s new, more protectionist trade policies on our sister site, Law and Liberty, this morning. This piece makes a good complement to today’s EconLog post by Jon Murphy, .. MORE
Tariffs
Writing on Facebook, AEI economist Mark Perry points to evidence that the tariffs imposed in April by the Trump Administration have not resulted in job creation for the manufacturing industry (Mark’s graph is recreated below for those of you who do not have access to Facebook. The solid red line indicates the day the tariffs .. MORE
Reading List
Sam works on innovation policy at Progress Ireland, an independent policy think tank in Dublin, and runs a publication called The Fitzwilliam. Most relevant to us, on his personal blog, he writes a popular link roundup; what follows is an abridged version of his Links for November. Blogs and short links 1. Is Google search .. MORE
Price Theory
This is the latest in our series of posts in our series on price theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed.Share your proposed solutions in the comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple of .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
The newest season of the Netflix documentary America’s Sweethearts, which traces the 2024 audition, training, and performance season of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, is a lot more than just a pretty face. The philosopher Loren Lomasky has argued persuasively in Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community that one of the things that makes humans human .. MORE
Adam Smith
Without trade, life more complex than bacteria could not exist. We are literally made of free trade. It is in every cell of our bodies. The first lifeforms to evolve on Earth, at least 3.5 billion years ago, were very simple. They were single-celled organisms that lacked a nucleus or the organelles we see in .. MORE
Price Controls
When we talk about opposition to prices, we’re usually talking about price controls. This isn’t unreasonable. There are still calls for them in response to short-term higher prices after a disaster, or longer-term cost-of-living increases, as for rent or food. It’s important to explain the negative unintended consequences of such interventions. But sometimes, people who .. MORE
Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean. And so betwixt them both you see, They licked the platter clean. “At that time, in that context, from my perspective, his quarter was worth at least a dollar to me.” Time. Context. Perspective. All are aspects of the way we value something—or .. MORE
In the late 1960s, the ideal of a society with free markets was definitively out of favor with the public. The Great War ended the “century of liberalism” (1815-1914), and the Great Depression pressed governments of all political stripes to intervene in the economy and to disengage from free trade. The Second World War then .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of Competition and Entrepreneurship by Israel Kirzner.1 The start of the 1970s was not the best time for the Austrian school of economics. Ludwig von Mises was past his productive years and would pass away in 1973. F. A. Hayek was still active but had turned much of his attention .. MORE
What is Humanomics?1 It sounds like a combination of human and economics. And indeed this book by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson can be read as an attempt to reintroduce the human component into economics. It can be read as a criticism of modern economics and as the presentation of a substitute for it. It .. MORE
My work jeans are Walmart at under $15.00 and my work shirts are $3.00 at a thrift store. If I'm going to destroy clothing, which is common in my work, I want it to be..
john hare, December 18