Joel Mokyr

When Winston Churchill was named Chancellor in November 1924, he is said to have assumed it was the largely ceremonial post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and was as surprised as anyone, given his lack of interest in economics, to find that it was Chancellor of the Exchequer, constitutionally the second most powerful… MORE

Market failure, which I am defining here as a market not reaching the equilibrium condition where quantity supplied equals quantity demanded, is ubiquitous.  Every time we walk into stores, we see market failure happening: shelves and shelves of goods sit, waiting for buyers. This is excess supply (surplus), a market failure. If the market were… MORE

Finding community can be difficult. But author Luke Burgis thinks the real challenge begins once we’ve found it and we’re subject to social pressures to conform. Listen as Burgis and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts trace the tension between individuals and their tribes through the foundational frameworks, such as family and school, that help forge our identities.… MORE

What counts for economic history was the beginning of a long and drawn-out rise in the belief in the transformative powers, social prestige, and virtuousness of useful knowledge. Without the continuous emergence of new techniques based on a better understanding of natural processes, growth will inexorably grind to a halt. —Joel Mokyr, A Culture of… MORE

Between 1760 and 1860, technological progress, education, and an increasing capital stock transformed England into the workshop of the world. The industrial revolution, as the transformation came to be known, caused a sustained rise in real income per person in England and, as its effects spread, in the rest of the Western world. Historians agree… MORE

Today, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University), Philippe Aghion (London School of Economics), and Peter Howitt (Brown University) “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”1  This follows a recent trend for the Committee to award to economics focused on economic growth, following Acemoglou, Johnson, and Robinson in 2024 and Kremer,… MORE

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

On April 10, 2013, Liberty Fund and Butler University sponsored a symposium, “Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society.” The evening began with solo presentations by the three participants–Michael Munger of Duke University, Robert Skidelsky of the University of Warwick, and Richard Epstein of New York University. (Travel complications forced the fourth invited participant, James Galbraith… MORE

Recognized as one of the most influential voices in the areas of market structure, the theory of the firm, law and economics, resource unemployment, and monetary theory and policy, in this 2001 interview, Armen Alchian (1914-2013) outlines the “UCLA tradition” of economics which he founded and explores the many unanticipated consequences of self-seeking individual behavior.… MORE

  Douglass North shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in economics with robert fogel “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.” North earned his Ph.D. in economics at the University of California at Berkeley, but by his own admission learned how… MORE

Introduction Julian Simon Source: Julian Simon’s personal website Three inter-related arguments made Julian Simon famous: that natural resources are practically infinite; that food supplies have been increasing at least as fast as the population has; and that people, with their skills, spirits, and imaginations, are the ultimate scarce resource. Simon argued that natural resources are… MORE

Compound Rates of Growth In the modern version of an old legend, an investment banker asks to be paid by placing one penny on the first square of a chessboard, two pennies on the second square, four on the third, etc. If the banker had asked that only the white squares be used, the initial… MORE