March
2023

February
2023

January
2023

December
2022

March 2023

Article

Liberty Tours: Why Tourism Matters to Liberty

By Mikayla Novak

What is the relevance of tourism to a classical liberal? For the casual observer, tourism may "merely" be interpreted as an opportunistic, temporal break from everyday routines. As important as this may be for many, tourism is an important subject of research i...

Book Review

Rules for Non-Radicals

By M. Scott King

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 th...

Book Review

The Long, Hard Road to “Longtermism”

By James Broughel

Book Review of What We Owe the Future, by William MacAskill.1 An issue that has long divided scholars is the question of how much weight to give to the interests of future generations, especially when making decisions of significant public importance. On ...

Book Review

Financial Policy

By Arnold Kling

... [this book] originated, strange to say, as a study of the history of the international bond market. I came to realize in the course of my research, however, that the bond between creditor and debtor was only one of many bonds I needed to consider; and that in ma...

February 2023

Article

From Here to Serenity: How Public Choice Makes Me Less Cynical

By Art Carden

After James M. Buchanan won the Nobel Prize, some people suggested public choice was too obvious for a Nobel. To others, it was wrong. Some said it was both. Others claimed that public choice is immoral: after all, Buchanan wrote from the "homely observation" that p...

Article

Behavioral Economics: Method, Norms, and Policy

By Alejandra Salinas

In the neoclassical economic model, agents are assumed to act in pursuit of maximum utility—to know their preferences and some of the constraints they face—and to effectively satisfy their economic needs by means of market exchanges. In contrast, behavioral econ...

Article

What Arnold Schwarzenegger Can Teach You About the Economics of Property Rights

By Rosolino Candela

"Liberty and responsibility," according to F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty, "are inseparable. A free society will not function or maintain itself unless its members regard it as right that each individual occupy the position that results from his action and a...

Book Review

Persistent Differences in Gender Temperament

By Arnold Kling

If I have to, I can do anything I am strong I am invincible I am woman —Helen Reddy, "I Am Woman" Helen Reddy's 1971 anthem captured the spirit of feminism in that era. The mood was optimistic, proud, and spirited. "Nothing can stop me," the song se...

January 2023

Article

Behavioral Versus Free Market Economics

By Leonidas Zelmanovitz

In the late 1960s, the ideal of a society with free markets was definitively out of favor with the public. The Great War ended the "century of liberalism" (1815-1914), and the Great Depression pressed governments of all political stripes to intervene in the economy and...

Book Review

When Searching for Monsters to Destroy, What Do We Fail to Discover?

By Rosolino Candela

Book Review of In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace, by Christopher J. Coyne.1 According to Ludwig von Mises, "economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed...

Book Review

Constitutional Democracy: Is Democracy Limited by Constitutional Rules?

By Pierre Lemieux

A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan.1 Originally published in 1985, Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan's The Reason of Rules extends Buchanan's previous work, n...

Book Review

Rejecting the Culture Transplant

By Arnold Kling

A book review of The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left, by Garett Jones.1 In January of 2018, President Donald Trump disparaged taking in immigrants from "[expletive] countries." Equally dramati...

December 2022

Article

The Economics of Quiet Quitting: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

By Rosolino Candela

In the last several months, growing attention has been paid both in print and social media to what has become known as "The Great Resignation," a term referring to the increase in job openings and corresponding increase in employment turnover rate since 2021. To pla...

Article

Economics and the Art of Education

By Richard Gunderman

The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. —Vincent Van Gogh1 Politicians have long assayed education in terms of economic value. In 1994, for example, Bill Clinton told educators that they we...

Book Review

The Boys Under the Bus

By Arnold Kling

... the problems of boys and men are structural in nature... the educational system is structured in ways that put them at a disadvantage. Men are struggling in the labor market because of an economic shift away from traditionally male jobs. And fathers are dislocat...

Book Review

Some Unpleasant Thoughts: Refugees and Wealth

By Kwok Ping Tsang

A book review of The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies by Alexander Betts (Oxford University Press, 2021)1 A key idea in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations is that people have a persistent and ever-present drive to "better their...