Article
Book Review, Kling's Corner
Unlike chimpanzees, which acquire the vast majority of their daily calorie intake from easy-to-find foods such as fruit and leaves, early humans occupied a more complex foraging niche, relying on foods they had to either extract (e.g., buried tubers, or nuts inside shells) or hunt. These more complex foraging techniques take time and skill to .. MORE
Article
… if we were able to adjust our accounting processes to the realities of taxpayers’ obligations, the government deficit which enters into the savings of business and individuals would be offset by taxpayers’ liabilities, the fiscal (revenue and expenditure) decisions of the government would be neutralized….”1 (Warburton, p. 221) Financial instruments representative of public debt .. MORE
Liberty Classics
When the dust settles, Anthony de Jasay’s The State1 will probably be recognized as one of the great books of the 20th century. It may be the most serious and subversive challenge to state authority ever written. That this book is not banned must be proof that we are not living under real tyranny or at .. MORE
Economic and Political Philosophy
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Economic and Political Philosophy
Free Markets
Taxation
Economic and Political Philosophy
International Trade
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
econtalk-podcast
Many boys and men in America are doing worse than girls and women in education while struggling with a culture that struggles to define what masculinity is in the 21st century. Is this a problem? Richard Reeves thinks so which is why he started the American Institute for Boys and Men. Listen as Reeves discusses .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
While operating on a 16-year-old girl who suffered from severe seizures, neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried stumbled on the region of the brain that makes us laugh. To neuroscientist Patrick House, Fried’s ability to produce laughter surgically raises deep and disconcerting questions about how the brain works. Join Fried, House, and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts for a live broadcast .. MORE
Free Markets
The rise of populist politicians is a worldwide phenomenon. An interesting article by the bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal in Germany analyzes the phenomenon in light of last weekend’s electoral advance of two populist parties, one at the extreme right, the other at the extreme left, in two German states (Bertrand Benoit, “Europe’s .. MORE
Taxation
Here are three possible answers to this question: 1. No, they are not income and should not be taxed.2. Yes, they are income and should be taxed.3. Yes, they are income, but they should not be taxed. We should tax consumption, not income. I favor the third view. People often say that you haven’t really .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
In his Geschichte und Kritik der Kapitalzins-Theorieen (1884), which I translated in 1890 under the title of Capital and Interest, Professor Bohm-Bawerk, after passing in critical review the various opinions, practical and theoretical, held from the earliest times on the subject of interest, ended with the words: “On the foundation thus laid, I shall try .. MORE
This volume includes Burke’s four Letters on a Regicide Peace, his last published writings on the French Revolution and the policy toward it that he would have Great Britain follow. There is no need to explain here the historical circumstances in which Burke wrote these works or the details of their composition and publication, since .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan.1 Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules is remarkable. It is an important book, and the questions that the authors wrestle with are massive. When so much academic work feels as though it .. MORE
with Jan Gerber Few economists today ask whether prices are just. This is due in part to positivism and efforts to remain “value-neutral,” but ultimately, economists no longer discuss just prices because advances in economic thinking make such reasoning intractable or irrelevant. For most folks, however, concerns about just prices still matter—especially regarding housing and .. 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
Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Universally respected as one of the founders of the economics of public choice, he is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics, and economic .. 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.
“ Insider trading” refers to transactions in a company’s securities, such as stocks or options, by corporate insiders or their associates based on information originating within the firm that would, once publicly disclosed, affect the prices of such securities. Corporate insiders are individuals whose employment with the firm (as executives, directors, or sometimes rank-and-file employees) .. MORE
There is no widely accepted definition of capital flight. The classic use of the term is to describe widespread currency speculation, especially when it leads to cross-border movements of private funds that are large enough to affect national financial markets. The distinction between “flight” and normal capital outflows is thus a matter of degree, much .. MORE
Positive externalities are benefits that are infeasible to charge to provide; negative externalities are costs that are infeasible to charge to not provide. Ordinarily, as Adam Smith explained, selfishness leads markets to produce whatever people want; to get rich, you have to sell what the public is eager to buy. Externalities undermine the social benefits .. MORE
-Ludwig von Mises
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-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>