Featured Articles

Featured Article

Rent-Seek and You Will Find

“In politics you try to move money around and take credit for it. In markets you try to create value and make profits.” I don’t know if we should stay in this business.” That city official was just being honest, but his framing of the problem surprised me. The “business” he was referring to was .. MORE

Reflections from Europe

Thank Heaven for an Inefficient Market: A Tale of Zombies and Speculators

Since the series of banking and stock market mishaps of the last eighteen months, there is an intense revival of interest in the “efficient market” theory of exchange-traded asset prices. The theory proposes that the prices reflect all the available information relevant to them. Various inferences have been drawn from this. One is that since .. MORE

Article

Behavioral Economics: Method, Norms, and Policy

In the neoclassical economic model, agents are assumed to act in pursuit of maximum utility—to know their preferences and some of the constraints they face—and to effectively satisfy their economic needs by means of market exchanges. In contrast, behavioral economists claim that individual judgments tend to be cognitively conditioned by biases such as overconfidence, lack .. MORE

Most Recent

Adam Smith

A Tribute to Adam Smith

By David Henderson

Macroeconomics

Robert Hetzel’s History of the Fed

By Scott Sumner

Artificial Intelligence

Why Would It Kill Us???

By Amy Willis

Media Watch

Elon Musk, Edward Luce, and Libertarianism

By Pierre Lemieux

Article

Socialism Is as Socialism Does

By Adam Martin

Article

A Wealth Tax Reality Check

By Richard B. McKenzie

Book Review

In Search of Stable Money

By Arnold Kling

Industry Interviews: Individuals at Work

Les Snead on Risk, Decisions, and Football

Economic Education

Econ 101 Lessons from Highway 61 Revisited

By John Phelan

EconTalk

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econtalk-podcast

Angus Deaton on Health, Wealth, and Poverty

Angus Deaton of Princeton University and author of the Great Escape talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book–the vast improvements in health and standard of living in recent times. Deaton surveys the improvements in life expectancy and income both in the developed and undeveloped world. Inequality of both health and wealth are discussed .. MORE

econtalk-podcast

Beth Redbird on Licensing

Economists often oppose the expansion of licensing in America in recent years because it makes it harder for people with low skills to get access to opportunity. Sociologist Beth Redbird of Northwestern University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about a different perspective. Redbird finds that licensing expands opportunity for women and minorities and has .. MORE

EconLog

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Competition

The Tragedy of the Republican Presidential Commons

  Who asked Nikki Haley to run for president? Can somebody introduce us to the gentlepersons who convinced Tim Scott to enter the contest? Is anybody outside of his family and his congregation urging Mike Pence to join the Republican field? The same applies to the other long shots — Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burgum, Chris .. MORE

Media Watch

The (Gist of the) Law of Demand in One Lesson

There are loose ways of speaking, which are literally incorrect, and precise ways of speaking, meant to convey exact information. As an example of loose speaking, I read in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (“Why You’re Losing More to Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip,” May 29, 2023): In addition to smaller winnings, visitors are also .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.

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Book Titles

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Elements of Political Economy

By James Mill

There are few things of which I have occasion to advertize the reader, before he enters upon the perusal of the following work.My object has been to compose a school-book of Political Economy, to detach the essential principles of the science from all extraneous topics, to state the propositions clearly and in their logical order, .. MORE

The Theory of Money and Credit

By Ludwig Mises

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) first published The Theory of Money and Credit in German, in 1912. The edition presented here is that published by Liberty Fund in 1980, which was translated from the German by H. E. Batson originally in 1934, with additions in 1953. Only a few corrections of obvious typos were made for .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Deciding How to Decide

By Amy Willis

Many regard the US Constitution as one of the greatest successes in history. But is it time for a change? And if so, how? In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes back Mike Munger (for his 40th appearance!!!) to talk about changing constitutions, doing without them altogether, writing one, and whether they’re important. The .. MORE

A Keynesian’s Macroeconomic History

By Arnold Kling

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

Conversations

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

VIDEO

An Animal That Trades

A five-part short video series on the life and contemporary relevance of Adam Smith. This video series, produced by AdamSmithWorks, can be watch as a full 38-minute feature, or in five thematic, classroom-friendly chunks. To access all, click here.   Below are some discussion prompts related to this video:   Part 1: The Invisible Hand .. MORE

Econlib Videos

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

Labor, Schools of Economic Thought

Marxism

More than a century after his death, Karl Marx remains one of the most controversial figures in the Western world. His relentless criticism of capitalism and his corresponding promise of an inevitable, harmonious socialist future inspired a revolution of global proportions. It seemed that—with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the spread of communism throughout .. MORE

Government Policy, The Economics of Special Markets

Defense

National defense is in many ways a public, or “collective,” good, which means two things. First, consumption of the good by one person does not reduce the amount available for others to consume. Thus, all people in a nation must “consume” the same amount of national defense (the defense policies implemented by the government), although .. MORE

The Economics of Special Markets

Sports

Major league sports, as every reader of the sports pages knows, is a major league business. As a result, economics has a lot to say about how players, teams, and leagues will act under different circumstances. But would you believe that economics can be used to predict which teams will win and which will lose? .. MORE

Quotes

Entrepreneurship does not consist of grasping a free ten-dollar which one has already discovered to be resting on one’s hand; it consists in realizing that it is in one’s hand and that it is available for grasping.

-Israel Kirzner

The system of market economy has never been fully and purely tried.   Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

- Full Quote >>

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

-Frederic Bastiat Full Quote >>