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Article
It is pretty clear that an economist, like a poet, uses metaphors. They are called ‘models.’ The market for apartments in New York, says the economist, is ‘just like’ a curve on a blackboard. No one has so far seen a literal demand curve floating in the sky above Manhattan. —Deirdre McCloskey, If You’re So .. MORE
Article
From Adam Smith to Ayn Rand, advocates of liberty have used stories to convey their theories of economics and morality. In the eighteenth century, Smith made his ideas lucid to contemporaries—starting with the university students he was teaching—by interspersing his writings with literary examples and brief narratives. The tale of the poor man’s son visited .. MORE
Book Review, Kling's Corner
Experiments consistently reveal that our moral judgments are driven by perceptions of harm. We condemn acts based on how much they seem to victimize someone vulnerable. —Kurt Gray, Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground1 (page 8) In his book, Outraged, Kurt Gray studies the psychology of moral .. MORE
Incentives
Philosophy and Methodology
Economic Education
Economic Institutions
Economic Theory
Price Controls
Industry Interviews: Individuals at Work
Economic History
Economic Education
econtalk-podcast
What if math isn’t about grinding through equations, but about training your intuition and changing how your brain works? Mathematician and author David Bessis tells EconTalk’s Russ Roberts that the secret of mathematics isn’t logic–it’s the way we learn to see. He explains why math books aren’t meant to be read like novels, how great .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
Why are European cities charming and American cities often so charmless? Simple, says urbanist Alain Bertaud: most American cities are zoned for single-family housing. The result is not enough customers within walking distance of a business, and not enough parking for the customers who drive. Why American cities are zoned that way is related to culture .. MORE
Incentives
I’ve had a difficult time watching superhero movies the past few years. Not because they lack quality (though perhaps true), but because they rely on bad economics. To justify this claim, I propose to answer the question: why wouldn’t there be superheroes? The Gotham Problem Imagine you live in Gotham City, where there is rampant .. MORE
Tariffs
Shortly after the “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced back in April, Janet Bufton wrote an excellent post about whether or not Adam Smith would approve of those so-called “reciprocal” tariffs. I also riffed off her post here. In both cases, we argued these tariffs were not compliant with Smith’s argument and thus he would not .. MORE
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Biographical Remarks on Arthur Bruce Smith (1851-1937) by David M. HartBruce Smith was an Australian Barrister (a lawyer who is qualified to argue before a judge) and a Member of the Parliament of New South Wales when it was still a self-governing colony before it became one of the states in the federal Commonwealth of .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan.1 Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules is remarkable. It is an important book, and the questions that the authors wrestle with are massive. When so much academic work feels as though it .. MORE
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
VIDEO
A professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and a primary figure in Chicago School Economics and in the field of Law and Economics, Harold Demsetz has contributed original research on the theory of the firm, regulation in markets, industrial organization, antitrust policy, transaction costs, externalities, and .. MORE
VIDEO
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
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The Reading Lists by Topic pages contain some suggested readings organized by topic, including materials available on Econlib. Brief reviews or descriptions are included for many items.
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Introduction No area of tax policy has changed more over the past four decades than corporate income taxation. Since 1980, corporate tax rates have fallen as countries have vied for business investment in an increasingly global economy. More recently, however, lower corporate tax rates have triggered concerns about a “race to the bottom” and, in .. MORE
The modern history of drug regulation in the United States has been marked by the simultaneous pursuit of two goals—safety and efficacy. Since passage of the 1962 amendments to the Food and Drug Act, most members of the medical and regulatory establishment have regarded those two goals as complementary. By the early seventies, however, critics .. MORE
Few observers and even few experts remember that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created in response to the 1959 imposition of import quotas on crude oil and refined products by the United States. In 1959, the U.S. government established the Mandatory Oil Import Quota program (MOIP), which restricted the amount of imported .. MORE
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