Featured Articles

Book Review, Kling's Corner

America’s Past and America’s Future

“Anglo-Saxon institutions focused on individual property rights and commercial transactions, rather than on preserving land ownership in terms of a family or tribal tradition.” In their new book, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come,1 James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus predict America’s future by .. MORE

Article, Teacher's Corner

What Malthus Missed, and Attacks on Individualists

Several editions of Malthus’s Essay are cited in this and the previous Teacher’s Corner. On line, see the first edition and sixth edition. In the last Teacher’s Corner, we saw how badly Thomas Robert Malthus‘ arguments in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1826, first pub. 1798), have been misunderstood and misrepresented by detractors .. MORE

An Economist Looks at Europe

The Revival of Nationalism

“It is the artificial creation of nation states that lays the ground for the invasion of personal liberties. Moving borders often leads to the shedding of blood, as Europe discovered to its cost during the 20th century.” This is the year when we commemorate the start of the First Word War, a ghastly conflict in .. MORE

Most Recent

Regulation

My Weekly Reading for February 16, 2025

By David Henderson

Monetary Policy

Bitcoin isn’t money

By Scott Sumner

Economics of Health Care

Are Conflicts of Interest at the FDA a Big Problem?

By David Henderson

Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Innovation’s Norms of Engagement

By Kevin Lavery

Adam Smith

What We Owe Each Other

By Jon Murphy

Money and Inflation

Price Increases and Possible Consequences

By Pierre Lemieux

Politics and Economics

Reciprocal tariff cuts?

By Scott Sumner

Economics of Health Care

Why Can’t Food Stamps be Used for a Rotisserie Chicken?

By Craig Richardson

Economics of Crime

Should we allow bribery?

By Scott Sumner

Economic Education

EconLog Price Theory: The Membership Difference?

By Bryan Cutsinger

EconTalk

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econtalk-podcast

Minimalists and Hoarders (with Michael Easter)

Why do we buy stuff we don’t need? Maybe for the same reason that some people can’t stand stuff at all. Listen as author Michael Easter speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about how two seemingly opposed approaches to our possessions–minimalism and hoarding–may stem from the same impulse to cope with uncertainty. They also discuss the downsides of minimalism and how .. MORE

econtalk-extra

BS Bots and Blue Checks

There has been a lot to talk about in tech lately. In this episode, host Russ Roberts welcomes back one of our favorite tech-watchers, Arnold Kling, to talk about these latest developments- including Elon Musk’s acquisition of twitter, the implosion of FTX and the scandal-plagued Sam Bankman-Fried, and the release of Chat GPT. We know you’ve .. MORE

EconLog

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Economics of Health Care

Why Can’t Food Stamps be Used for a Rotisserie Chicken?

A few months ago, I was in a convenience store and was struck by a customer’s conversation.  Surveying the rows of chips, candy bars, ice cream, and soft drinks, she said to her friend, “I can literally buy anything I want in here with my EBT card, except for hot things, like the coffee or .. MORE

Politics and Economics

Reciprocal tariff cuts?

Economic theories are generally symmetrical. If more of X causes more of Y, then less of X causes less of Y. Thus I was confused by a recent story in Bloomberg: Trump has gravitated toward the reciprocal tariff plan as a key part of his push to raise US levies overall. Trump has said it .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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

Browse Articles

Book Titles

All Books >

A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation

By Thomas Mackay

Thomas Mackay (1849-1912) was a successful English wine merchant who retired early from business so he could devote himself entirely to the study of economic issues such as the Poor Laws, growing state intervention in the economy, and the rise of socialism. Mackay was asked by the individualist and laissez-faire lobby group, the Liberty and .. MORE

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

By Ludwig Mises

IT GIVES me great satisfaction to see this book, handsomely printed by a distinguished publishing house, appear in its third revised edition. Two terminological remarks may be in order. First, I employ the term “liberal” in the sense attached to it everywhere in the nineteenth century and still today in the countries of continental Europe. .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Climate Change: What is (Not) To Be Done

By Pedro Schwartz

In my previous column, I did my best to gauge the extent of the damage done to the climate as a result of human action, as well as the likelihood of an imminent climatic catastrophe. In this piece, I intend to explore whether a spontaneous correction of impending climate tragedy is possible through the piecemeal .. MORE

Does Libertarianism Favor Labor?

By Arnold Kling

Review of Classical Liberalism and the Industrial Working Class, by Alberto Alberto Mingardi.1 Thomas Hodgskin (12 December 1787-21 August 1869) was an English socialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism, and defender of free trade and early trade unions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the term socialist included any opponent of .. MORE

Conversations

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

VIDEO

Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society

On April 10, 2013, Liberty Fund and Butler University sponsored a symposium, “Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society.” The evening began with solo presentations by the three participants–Michael Munger of Duke University, Robert Skidelsky of the University of Warwick, and Richard Epstein of New York University. (Travel complications forced the fourth invited participant, James Galbraith .. 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

Macroeconomics

Gross Output

Gross output (GO) is a relatively new macroeconomic statistic that measures total economic activity. Gross domestic product (GDP)—the other major measure of economic activity—accounts only for final goods and services. However, GO’s scope includes both final output as well as intermediate inputs at all earlier stages of production. Therefore, GO is a much more comprehensive measure .. MORE

Basic Concepts, International Economics

Competitiveness

“Competitiveness,” particularly with reference to an entire economy, is hard to define. Indeed, competitiveness, like love or democracy, actually has several meanings. And the question “Is America competitive?” has at least three interpretations: How well is the United States performing compared to other countries? How well has America performed in international trade? Are we doing .. MORE

Basic Concepts, International Economics, Macroeconomics

National Income Accounts

National income accounts (NIAs) are fundamental aggregate statistics in macroeconomic analysis. The ground-breaking development of national income and systems of NIAs was one of the most far-reaching innovations in applied economics in the early twentieth century. NIAs provide a quantitative basis for choosing and assessing economic policies as well as making possible quantitative macroeconomic modeling .. MORE

Quotes

An established government has an infinite advantage, by the very circumstance of its being established; the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to any thing that has not the recommendation of antiquity.

-David Hume

The real advantage which truth has consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances  falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes ...

-John Stuart Mill Full Quote >>

The market may be viewed, not as an institution facilitating the indirect fulfillment of individual desires…but on the contrary, as an institution through which individuals may cooperate to satisfy their wants at higher general levels of satisfaction.

-Israel Kirzner Full Quote >>