Featured Articles

Featured Article

Opting Out of Social Security

Social Security is in the news again. Given its “pay-as-you-go” structure and demographic trends, over the years analysts have warned of the impending Social Security crisis. The difference is that now the financial day of reckoning looms quite close. “Fortunately, there is a ‘win-win’ method that can ease the fiscal crunch while benefiting the government’s .. MORE

Thinking Straight

Is Leviathan Required for a Peaceful Order?

ZOOM   Thomas Hobbes Thomas Hobbes’s symbolic explanation of the political aspects of society is well understood by those who have not read his Leviathan. It is also understood by some, though not all, who have read it with sympathy. Hobbes’s people have self-preservation and domination of others as their salient aims, with no other .. MORE

An Economist Looks at Europe

King Midas in the Indies

The world of money and finance was transformed by the discovery of America, as that Continent unjustly came to be called, or the Indies, as the Castilians named it. A flood of gold and silver washed over Europe raising the level of prices, transmuting trade and banks, changing the finance of governments, and giving rise .. MORE

Most Recent

Macroeconomics

Conor Sen on Fed policy

By Scott Sumner

Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing

NBA Players’ Average Height and Canada’s Fall in Real GDP Per Capita

By David Henderson

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Bad Economics in Fiction, Star Trek edition

By Kevin Corcoran

Article

Beware of Economic Misconceptions

By Arnold Kling

Article

Can We Morally Assess Business?

By Gregory Robson

Book Review

Capitalism, Corruption, and the Ugly Pig

By Michael Munger

Book Review

The Wrong Road to Freedom

By David R. Henderson

Immigration, Nationalism, and Tribalism

Reclaiming Tribalism (with Michael Morris)

International Trade

My Weekly Reading for October 6, 2024

By David Henderson

EconTalk

All >

econtalk-extra

Real-Life Economics: Rational or Complex?

Doyne Farmer’s recent conversation with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts has given listeners reason to reflect on the state of economics and the way mainstream economists model market behaviors and use their models and tools to predict behaviors and identify trends.  After listening to the EconTalk episode “Chaos and Complexity Economics (with J. Doyne Farmer),” would you .. MORE

econtalk-extra

Bring Back Shame and Blame

In this episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes back Arnold Kling to talk about two ideas we think a lot about- improving government and improving public discourse. Kling has some ideas about how to improve both, and he shares them throughout the conversation. Why has the administrative state grown so much? Kling and Roberts agree .. MORE

EconLog

All >

Central Planning

My Weekly Reading for September 29, 2024

Deregulation Can Fix the Housing Crunch by J.D. Tuccille, Reason, September 23, 2024. Excerpt: Building regulations reflect a wide range of government interventions, including zoning restrictions, land use regulations, energy efficiency codes, safety codes, and more. The intent behind such rules often started with public health, then expanded to encompass energy efficiency, home values, and even .. MORE

Economic Education

Bella and Brutto are Different: A Lesson in Comparative Advantage

As we dig into the Fall semester, thousands of students will begin their first economics course and be exposed to the world of economic thinking. I used to be a drumming instructor with a music lessons company. One thing I enjoyed doing as a teacher was leaving the student with the capability of performing and .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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

Browse Articles

Book Titles

All Books >

Life of Adam Smith

By John Rae

THE fullest account we possess of the life of Adam Smith is still the memoir which Dugald Stewart read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on two evenings of the winter of 1793, and which he subsequently published as a separate work, with many additional illustrative notes, in 1810. Later biographers have made few, if .. MORE

The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy

By Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

The War That Never Ends

By Nathan Goodman

A Book Review of Manufacturing Militarism: U.S. Government Propaganda in the War on Terror, by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall.1 It’s been over 20 years since the 9/11 attacks. Ever since those horrible attacks, the United States government has been waging a “war on terror” both at home and abroad. The war on .. MORE

It Was All So Unlikely: Wilfred McClay’s Land of Hope

By Mark C. Schug

A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the American Story by Wilfred McClay.1 American history isn’t what it used to be. Once it was common for a history textbook author to tell a good story. I remember as an eighth-grade student being horrified that my teacher was going to toss out a bunch .. 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

A Conversation with Israel Kirzner

Israel Kirzner, Professor Emeritus at NYU, is among the foremost scholars in the continuing development of the Austrian school of economic theory. He has extended our understanding of the workings of a free society, illuminated the role of entrepreneurs in the process of economic discovery, and shed new light on the dynamics of market forces. .. MORE

Econlib Videos

Intellectual Portrait Series

Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time

Browse Videos

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

Economies Outside the United States

Transition Economies

From 1989 to 1991, communism foundered throughout the former Soviet bloc in Europe and Asia. From Prague to Vladivostok, twenty-eight countries in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe abandoned similar political and economic systems.1 The Collapse of the Socialist System At the end of communism, all these countries were experiencing great economic problems. The .. MORE

Basic Concepts

Division of Labor

Division of labor combines specialization and the partition of a complex production task into several, or many, sub-tasks. Its importance in economics lies in the fact that a given number of workers can produce far more output using division of labor compared to the same number of workers each working alone. Interestingly, this is true .. MORE

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

Quotes

The competitive process depends entirely on the freedom of those with better ideas or with greater willingness to serve the market better opportunities. Every arbitrary impediment to entry is a restriction on the competitiveness of the market process.

-Israel Kirzner

All plans of government, which suppose great reformations in the manners of mankind, are plainly imaginary.

-David Hume Full Quote >>

The “market” or market organization is not a means toward the accomplishment of anything. It is, instead, the institutional embodiment of the voluntary exchange processes that are entered into by individuals in their several capacities. This is all there is to it.

-James M. Buchanan Full Quote >>