By Alice Temnick

This episode of The Jolly Swagman Podcast, hosted by Joseph Noel Walker took place on April 3, 2020, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts as guest.  Though recorded early into the pandemic, their conversation remains relevant today. Walker and Roberts converse freely, often about what constitutes meaningful conversation an...

By Pierre Lemieux

Trump’s early 2018 tariffs on washing machines are costing American consumers $1.5 billion a year in higher prices, even after deducting the meager $82 million in customs revenues. The whole tariff was paid by American consumers in higher prices—in fact, even more than the whole tariff if we consider that dryers, a...

By David Henderson

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 1.8 million in July, and the unemployment rate fell to 10.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. These improvements in the labor market reflected the continued resumption of economic activity that had been curtailed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pa...

By Herbert Spencer

The Man Versus The State by Herbert Spencer was originally published in 1884 by Williams and Norgate, London and Edinburgh. The book consisted of four articles which had been published in Contemporary Review for February, April, May, June, and July of 1884. For collection in book form, Spencer added a Preface and a Po...

By Russell S. Sobel

Traditional neoclassical microeconomics presents a very lengthy and rigorous treatment of business firms operating in markets with different levels of competition. Economics professors test their students' knowledge about this material mostly with equations, graphs, and mathematical conditions. While these models are n...

By Dominic Pino

Patrick Deneen, a professor of political philosophy at Notre Dame and critic of liberalism, began a tweet thread on May 17 by asserting, “Liberalism holds that there can be no common good, only individual interests.”  Deneen’s assertion is incorrect, but classical liberals can make it too easy for critics.  Tal...

Philosopher and author Agnes Callard talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the state of philosophy, the power of philosophy, and the search for wisdom and truth. This is a wide-ranging conversation related to the question of how we learn, how to behave ethically, and the role of religion and philosophy in encoura...

Introduction Here are ten fundamental ideas to help you explore and understand the world around us using the economic way of thinking. I've written an essay on each idea and listed some reading and listening suggestions if you want to learn more. The essays are all written for a beginner but some of the ideas are subt...

By Bryan Caplan

Blogger Jubal Harshaw sent me this response to last week's installment of the Escaping Paternalism Book Club last week.  Reprinted with his permission. Hey Bryan, Today you wrote: “4. Once again, I wish the book contained a detailed section on opioids.  The usual view, of course, is that Big Pharma’s lobb...

By Russ McCullough

Questions are not scarce in economics, and the title of this book poses a whopper: "Are Economists Basically Immoral?"1 Spoiler alert, the answer is "no". However, it is easy to see how economists get a bad rap when the public thinks economics is all about greed and maximizing profit. A book that uses this questio...

By Alice Temnick

Are you a reader who can socialize with dead people? One who engages in the form of reading that enables interaction with people who have been dead a long time? In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts and philosopher Agnes Callard consider the state of humanities education, the lifelong benefits of the study of phi...

By G. Patrick Lynch

A few days ago I engaged in a thought experiment.  What might Gordon Tullock have suggested to address the problem of the rising number of younger people testing positive for COVID-19.  I used Tullock’s spike, the example he gave of placing a spike in the middle of a steering wheel to “encourage” safe drivi...

By Kevin D. Hoover

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 inve...