By Maria Pia Paganelli

A Book Review of Adam Smith in Toulouse and Occitania: The Unknown Years, by Alain Alcouffe and Philippe Massot-Bordenave.1 Adam Smith in Toulouse and Occitania: The Unknown Years is not a book for everyone. It is not an introduction to the life or the works of Adam Smith. It is not even a traditional biograph...

By Kimberly Ann Elliott and Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Barbara Oegg

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. (W...

By Pierre Lemieux

Amazon is in many ways a fascinating company and deserves to be defended against most of its mainstream critics. However, it would be simplistic to explain its campaign for a $15 federally-imposed minimum wage by identifying it with a corporate Mother Teresa. Its more obvious reasons to preach for minimum wages are not...

Economist and author Michael Munger of Duke University talks about human wants and desires with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Human beings have desires about our desires. Can we change what we want? And how should economists and normal human beings think about doing the right thing, what we often call morality? Is acting...

By Amy Willis

The COVID pandemic has disrupted our lives in innumerable ways. For those with children, the disruption to schooling is likely at the top of the list. In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes back economist (and parenting guru!) Emily Oster to talk about the pandemic's effects on schools. Oster and team ...

By Bryan Caplan

[Scroll to the end for a couple final reactions to comments .] In a reflective moment, George Orwell wrote, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."  Yet if you actually read his ...

By Nicolás Cachanosky

What is Modern Monetary Theory? The term "modern" in Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is probably not the best choice of words, since it implies there is something new in MMT. As many MMT critics point out, looking for something new in MMT is a pointless excercise. There is nothing new to be found. Paul Krugman,1 Lawrence...

By Eugen v. Böhm-Bawerk

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...

By David Henderson

  Many of the comments on my post yesterday, "Bernie Sanders, Minimum Wage, and Systemic Racism," March 1, were particularly good. They have convinced me that I need to walk back some of the things I said. Like most people, I hate to admit that I'm wrong. Unlike most people, I'm typically quite quick to adm...

Economist and author Daniel Hamermesh of Barnard College and the Institute for the Study of Labor talks about his latest book, Spending Time, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Hamermesh explores how we treat time relative to money, how much we work and how that has changed over time, and the ways economists look at time...

Econlib Resource EconTalk Podcast Listening Guides Introduction The listening guides listed here are supplements to accompany podcasts on EconTalk. Each guide consists of seven to ten discussion questions encouraging the listener to think broadly about what the podcast is about and to focus more closely on the key...

1840-1921

  Carl Menger has the twin distinctions of being the founder of Austrian economics and a cofounder of the marginal utility revolution. Menger worked separately from William Jevons and Leon Walras and reached similar conclusions by a different method. Unlike Jevons, Menger did not believe that goods pr...