Revisiting the China Shock (with Joseph Francis)

In his new book The Civilization of Commerce (Encounter Books, October 2026), American Institute for Economic Research president Samuel Gregg explores the requirements, benefits, and positive features of a commercial society, which isn’t merely trading and exchanging goods but a civilization of growth in knowledge, specialization, networks, and institutions that is built on tradition, virtue,… MORE

For millions of entrepreneurs, the greatest barrier to generating wealth is no longer market competition but the relentless expansion of regulations and administrative procedures. While governance is ostensibly designed to ensure order, modern bureaucracy has morphed into a formidable “invisible shackle.” Rather than functioning as a neutral tool of oversight, excessive red tape treats a… MORE

Sure, you can use willpower or grit to break bad habits and build new ones. But maybe the key to success is simpler: change your situation. Psychologist Angela Duckworth explains to EconTalk’s Russ Roberts why the people and places around us shape our behavior more than we realize–and why we’re hard-wired to resist that idea.… MORE

President Donald Trump tells us we are “getting killed on trade”1 and stresses the country’s trade deficit. As a piece of language, however, “trade deficit” is almost as misleading as “getting killed on trade.” “Deficit,” like “getting killed,” has a negative valence, but it is phony. In a trade, one thing—a good or service—is exchanged… MORE

Where goods do not cross borders soldiers will. —attributed to Frédéric Bastiat1 There was a time when I understood the reasons for protectionism better than the arguments for free trade. Then I heard my doctoral supervisor, Lord Lionel Robbins, say in class that David Ricardo’s comparative cost theory of international free trade was the pons… MORE

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

Israel Kirzner, Professor Emeritus at NYU, is among the foremost scholars in the continuing development of the Austrian school of economic theory. He has extended our understanding of the workings of a free society, illuminated the role of entrepreneurs in the process of economic discovery, and shed new light on the dynamics of market forces.… MORE

Gary Becker (1930-2014) was one of the most original and pathbreaking economists of modern times. His 1992 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences was described as his “having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behavior.” Becker’s early work on discrimination led to his further work… MORE

Joseph Stiglitz, george akerlof, and michael spence shared the 2001 Nobel Prize “for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information.” The particular market with asymmetric information that Stiglitz analyzed was the insurance market. In 1976, Stiglitz and coauthor Michael Rothschild started from the plausible assumption that people buying insurance know more about their relevant characteristics… MORE

  Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin received the Nobel Prize in 1977, along with James Meade, for his “pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements.” Ohlin’s prize was based on his book Interregional and International Trade, published in 1933. With a 1919 article by his former teacher Eli Heckscher as his… MORE

Abba Lerner was the milton friedman of the left. Like Friedman, Lerner was a brilliant expositor of economics who was able to make complex concepts crystal clear. Lerner was also an unusual kind of socialist: he hated government power over people’s lives. Like Friedman, he praised private enterprise on the ground that “alternatives to government… MORE