Lives Wasted and Well-Lived: David Wolpe on The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Senator Phil Gramm and Professor Donald Boudreaux have been named the inaugural recipients of The Liberty Fund Prize for Advancing Economic Liberty, presented by The Neal and Jane Freeman Foundation. Through decades of teaching, writing, and public discourse, both honorees have deepened the public’s understanding of how competitive markets sustain a free society. The prize… MORE

This year, the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, colloquially called the Nobel Prize in Economics, went to Robert E. Hall of Stanford University and Michael Woodford of Columbia University for their work in “microeconomic foundations of macroeconomic stabilization.” Those five words do not adequately describe their contributions. Hall and… MORE

For the first time in human history, we’re not having enough children to keep the world’s population from falling. And fertility is collapsing fastest not in rich nations but in places like Colombia, Thailand, and Guatemala, upending decades of economic wisdom. Economist Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde tells EconTalk’s Russ Roberts that falling fertility has accelerated sharply over… MORE

“To get the most out of life, to think like an economist, you have to be know what you’re giving up in order to get something else.” One of the challenges of being an economist is explaining what you do for a living. People understand that one of the things a professor of economics does… MORE

If you are anything like us, you are busy trying to maximize these last glorious days of summer. And you are probably also desperately trying to find the time to finish the pile of summer reading you planned for yourself at the beginning of summer. We are not here to help. As summer winds to… MORE

Nobel laureate Ronald H. Coase (1910-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Coase’s articles, “The Problem of Social Cost” and “The Nature of the Firm” are among the most important and most often cited works in the whole of economic literature. Coase recounts how he tried to encourage… MORE

Svetozar “Steve” Pejovich, one of the most dynamic and insightful theorists writing on property rights, reflects on his experience in economics. With characteristic sagacity and humor, he demonstrates the power that empirical cases can bring to bear on theoretical problems. Born in Belgrade, Pejovich is Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, where he taught for… MORE

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

  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

  David Ricardo was one of those rare people who achieved both tremendous success and lasting fame. After his family disinherited him for marrying outside his Jewish faith, Ricardo made a fortune as a stockbroker and loan broker. When he died, his estate was worth more than $100 million in today’s dollars. At age twenty-seven,… MORE

  George Akerlof, along with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz, received the 2001 Nobel Prize “for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information.” Although much of economics is built on the assumption of perfect information, various economists in the past had considered the effects of imperfect information. Two giants in this area were ludwig von… MORE