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Article
Herbert Stein, an economist who served in the Nixon Administration, wrote a memoir in which he looked back on his experience. He wrote that two main lessons he had learned were: 1. Economists do not know very much. 2. Other people, including politicians who make economic policy, know even less about economics than economists do.1 .. MORE
Book Review
Book Review of What Went Wrong with Capitalism? by Ruchir Sharma.1 Capitalism has a “Pretty Pig” problem. The reference is to a state fair livestock contest, where there is a judging of the beauty of adult swine. There are only two entrants, because adult swine just aren’t pretty. The first pig is brought out, and .. MORE
Book Review
A Book Review of The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, by Joseph E. Stiglitz.1 Introduction Columbia University economics professor Joseph E. Stiglitz has recently published a book titled The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society. In it, Stiglitz, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics with George Akerlof and .. MORE
Politics and Economics
Cost-benefit Analysis
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Economic Education
Adam Smith
Labor Market
Central Planning
Cross-country Comparisons
Political Economy
Macroeconomics
econtalk-podcast
Is tribalism destroying democracy? According to cultural psychologist Michael Morris of Columbia University, just the opposite may be the case. As he explains in his new book, Tribal, our tribal instincts can also be the source of our success–in politics, society, business, and even professional sports. Listen as Morris and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts discuss real examples of .. MORE
econtalk-extra
In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts talks with historian Diane Ravitch about her new book, Slaying Goliath. Ravitch, a former proponent of charter schools, now bemoans what she sees as their broken promise to American students. Charters promised to be R&D centers for best educational practices, which they would then share with the traditional .. MORE
Adam Smith
Adam Smith famously commented on how specialization increased productivity in a pin factory, where different individuals specialized in each subtask involved in manufacturing even a simple object. I thought of that anecdote when reading Razib Khan’s account of the difference between Neanderthals and early modern humans in Europe: Though Neanderthals made effective tools, they were .. MORE
Central Planning
Because this is the 50th anniversary of the announcement that Friedrich Hayek was co-winner of the Nobel Prize in economics (the person who shared it was Gunnar Myrdal), it’s a good time to look closely at his 1945 article in the American Economic Review, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” When I used to cover .. MORE
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WE, the COMMISSIONERS appointed by YOUR MAJESTY to make a diligent and full inquiry into the practical operation of the Laws for the Relief of the Poor in England and Wales, and into the manner in which those laws are administered, and to report our opinion whether any and what alterations, amendments, or improvements may .. MORE
For a long time now the theory of capital has been under a cloud. Twenty years ago, when Professor Knight launched his attack on the capital theories of Boehm-Bawerk and Wicksell, there opened a controversy which continued for years on both sides of the Atlantic. Today very little is heard of all this. The centre .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of Discovery, Capitalism, and Distributive Justice, by Israel M. Kirzner.1 Can the distribution of income generated by the market process be regarded as just? The answer to that question depends on the extent to which economic theory accounts for the role of the entrepreneur in the market process. Israel Kirzner .. MORE
Randal O’Toole’s recent book, Romance of the Rails,1 is a slam-dunk. Actually, that is an understatement. The book is full of slam-dunks. In chapter after chapter, O’Toole, a long-time fan of railroads, puts his fandom aside and shows what a disaster government subsidies to, and regulations of, rail transportation have been. The book, subtitled “Why .. 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
Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has long been recognized as one of our most important economic thinkers and a leader of the Chicago school of economics. He is the author of many books and articles in economics, including A Theory of the Consumption Function and A Monetary History .. 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.
When most people hear the word “auction,” they think of the open-outcry, ascending-bid (or English) auction. But this kind of auction is only one of many. Fundamentally, an auction is an economic mechanism whose purpose is the allocation of goods and the formation of prices for those goods via a process known as bidding. Depending .. MORE
[Editor’s note: this article was written in 1992.] To the outside world, the Soviet Union seemed little different in 1984 from what it had been for at least a decade. Except for a few skeptics, almost everyone agreed that the Soviet Union was the world’s second-largest economy and, if not the most powerful military force .. MORE
What Is It? The “greenhouse effect” is a complicated process by which the earth is becoming progressively warmer. The earth is bathed in sunlight, some of it reflected back into space and some absorbed. If the absorption is not matched by radiation back into space, the earth will get warmer until the intensity of that .. MORE
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