A tariff is a fancy word for a tax. The term usually refers to import duties, which are fees levied on goods entering one country from another. Import tariffs have been a controversial feature of domestic politics, international diplomacy, and economic policy for centuries. This article covers some of the basic economics of tariffs as […]
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.
Few observers and even few experts remember that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created in response to the 1959 imposition of import quotas on crude oil and refined products by the United States. In 1959, the U.S. government established the Mandatory Oil Import Quota program (MOIP), which restricted the amount of imported […]
The fact of scarcity, which exists everywhere, guarantees that people will compete for resources. Markets are one way to organize and channel this competition. Politics is another. People use both markets and politics to get resources allocated to the ends they favor. Even in a democracy, however, political activity is startlingly different from voluntary exchange […]
Although labor unions have been celebrated in folk songs and stories as fearless champions of the downtrodden working man, this is not how economists see them. Economists who study unions—including some who are avowedly prounion—analyze them as cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor to various firms and industries. […]
The price of a share of stock, like that of any other financial asset, equals the present value of the sum of the expected dividends or other cash payments to the shareholders, where future payments are discounted by the interest rate and risks involved. Most of the cash payments to stockholders arise from dividends, which […]
As the category\'s name suggests, entries in this category are on important historical developments, two of the main ones being the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression.
With the decline in transportation costs, especially across oceans, and the recent increase in trade barriers, topics in international trade has become even more important.
Sometimes defined as the theory of the economy as a whole, macroeconomics includes issues such as economic growth, fiscal policy, monetary policy, national income accounts, and unemployment.
With extensive government regulation of many industries, there are many entries on aspects of that regulation, in industries ranging from agriculture, airlines, and energy tp trucking and pharmaceuticals.
Eugene Fama shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. The three received the prize for “for their empirical analysis of stock prices.” Fama has played a key role in the development of modern finance, with major contributions to a broad range of topics within the field, beginning […]
Arthur F. Burns is best known for having been chairman of the Federal Reserve System from 1970 to 1978. His appointment by President Richard Nixon capped a career of empirical studies of the economy, and particularly of business cycles. In a 1934 study based on his Ph.D. dissertation, Burns had noted the almost universal […]