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Book Review, Kling's Corner

Life After College

Can the four-year degree be saved? Not for most learners, I would argue. Once less expensive alternative pathways become clearer and surer, a full-on degree will seem impractical… But why does the degree have to be the only product that colleges sell? And why can’t the American Dream be achieved by other college products, other .. MORE

Article

Can We Morally Assess Business?

It is not trite to say that businesses are only as good or as bad as their members. Businesses are, after all, human endeavors, and their success or failure depends on the competence and good will of their members. Yet the assaults on hierarchical firms and market economies, often in the form of philippics that .. MORE

Book Review, Kling's Corner

A Keynesian’s Macroeconomic History

One main reason why rational expectations macroeconomics, in particular its implication that the Phillips Curve for anticipated changes in money is vertical even in the short run, caught on was the allegation that the incumbent Keynesian tradition had failed to either control or explain high inflation. “Failed to control,” I suppose, is true, though the .. MORE

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Politics and Economics

Borrow Billions for Babies?

By Scott Sumner

Economic Education

EconLog Price Theory: Cash Transfers

By Bryan Cutsinger

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Prime Mammals and the Limit of Limits

By Kevin Corcoran

Monetary Policy

Thoughts for Your Penny

By David Henderson

International Trade

Contradictions in “Our National Resources”

By Pierre Lemieux

International Trade

A Terrible Track Record on Trade Negotiations

By Jon Murphy

Competition

The Demise of the Penny?

By Scott Sumner

Regulation

Housing Restrictions Hit Harder Than Tariffs

By David Henderson

Economics of Health Care

My Weekly Reading for June 8, 2025

By David Henderson

EconTalk

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econtalk-podcast

EconTalk #1000 (with Russ Roberts)

In honor of EconTalk’s 1,000th episode, host Russ Roberts reflects on his long, strange journey from pioneer of the podcast format to weekly interviewer of leading economists, authors, and thinkers. Hear him answer your–and Chat GPT’s–questions about why he got started, how he preps, and how he picks guests. He also explains why debate gave .. MORE

econtalk-podcast

Frank Rose on Internet Narratives

Once it was The Shadow radio show; now it’s the podcast Serial. Is every old storytelling medium new again? Frank Rose, author of The Sea We Swim In, concedes that some things remain sacred–from the power of a great hook to the hope that great stories never end. But he also thinks the Internet has .. MORE

EconLog

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International Trade

Contradictions in “Our National Resources”

Assume for the sake of the argument that the run-of-the-mill nationalist’s expression “our national resources” is meaningful. These resources—physical resources, capital, talents, expertise, etc.—constitute a sort of “public good” belonging to, and to be consumed collectively by, the nation’s members, if not by “the Nation” herself. Consider a first contradiction. Nationalists are usually mercantilist: they .. MORE

International Trade

A Terrible Track Record on Trade Negotiations

One of the myriad of justifications given for Trump’s love of tariffs is that they are actually a negotiating tool to get the rest of the world to be more fair to American firms.  American firms supposedly face high trade and non-trade barriers and these tariffs are to show that “we mean business” and force .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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continued relevance of our classic titles.

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Book Titles

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The Postulates of English Political Economy

By Walter Bagehot

Mr. Bagehot left behind him some materials for a book which promised to make a landmark in the history of economics, by separating the use of the older, or Ricardian, economic reasonings from their abuse, and freeing them from the discredit into which they had fallen through being often misapplied. Unfortunately he did not complete .. MORE

An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation

By Jeremy Bentham

The First Edition of this work was printed in the year 1780; and first published in 1789. The present Edition is a careful reprint of ‘A New Edition, corrected by the Author,’ which was published in 1823.

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Rejecting the Culture Transplant

By Arnold Kling

A book review of The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left, by Garett Jones.1 In January of 2018, President Donald Trump disparaged taking in immigrants from “[expletive] countries.” Equally dramatically, albeit more politely, in the conclusion to his recent book, The Culture Transplant,1 Garett .. MORE

Where Is the Free Market Utopia?

By Art Carden

A Book Review of The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets, by Thomas Philippon.1 The Great Reversal defends a provocative and surprising thesis: the United States has given up on free markets while Europe has embraced them. As a result, Europeans pay less and get more in a lot of industries, like .. MORE

Conversations

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A Conversation with Harold Demsetz

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

A Conversation with Armen A. Alchian

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

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Intellectual Portrait Series

Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time

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Guides

College Economics Topics

Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.

Economist Biographies

From the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Economic Regulation, Labor

Occupational Licensing

[An update of Occupational Licensing, by David S. Young.] Occupational licensing today directly affects more than one in five workers in the United States—up from one in 20 workers in the 1950s. This is nearly twice the fraction of workers belonging to a union and more than 15 times the fraction of workers receiving the .. MORE

Government Policy, Macroeconomics, Schools of Economic Thought

Phillips Curve

The Phillips curve represents the relationship between the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate. Although he had precursors, A. W. H. Phillips’s study of wage inflation and unemployment in the United Kingdom from 1861 to 1957 is a milestone in the development of macroeconomics. Phillips found a consistent inverse relationship: when unemployment was high, .. MORE

Basic Concepts

Present Value

Present value is the value today of an amount of money in the future. If the appropriate interest rate is 10 percent, then the present value of $100 spent or earned one year from now is $100 divided by 1.10, which is about $91. This simple example illustrates the general truth that the present value .. MORE

Quotes

Without theory, one can never understand the general underlying mechanisms that operate in different situations. If not harnessed to solving empirical puzzles, theoretical work can spin off under its own momentum, reflecting little of the empirical world.

-Elinor Ostrom

All plans of government, which suppose great reformations in the manners of mankind, are plainly imaginary.

-David Hume Full Quote >>

Once it has been perceived that the division of labour is the essence of society, nothing remains of the antithesis between individual and society. The contradiction between individual principle and social principle disappears.

-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>