May
2025

April
2025

March
2025

February
2025

May 2025

Book Review

Popular Economics Books to Read or to Avoid

By Arnold Kling

This article has two lists: a list of popular economics books that I recommend reading; and a list of popular economics books that I recommend avoiding.1 What is a popular economics book? My first thought is that it is written without the mathematics and diagrams that ...

Article

Why Nogales Fails

By Roberto Salinas León

In their influential magnum opus, Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson develop the proposition that the wealth of nations is ultimately the outcome of political and economic institutions able to generate prosperity, progress and the distribution of opp...

Book Review

Law, Legislation, and Libertarianism

By Alberto Mingardi

A Book Review of Common Law Liberalism: A New Theory of the Libertarian Society, by John Hasnas.1 "Look around." John Hasnas's main political advice may sound extravagant. But his remarkable book, Common Law Liberalism,1 is a caveat against "inattentional blindne...

Article

The Inescapable Principle of Comparative Advantage

By Erik W. Matson

David Ricardo. In a recent article in The Financial Times Nat Dyer argues that economists misunderstand tariffs.1 He points out that tariffs have political and moral dimensions not captured by standard economic reasoning. We therefore take economists' widespread advo...

April 2025

Article

Kenneth Arrow’s 1963 Article on Health Care Doesn’t Say What You Think

By Michael F. Cannon

Kenneth J. Arrow at Stanford University. Credit: LA Cicero, 11/4/1996. As a health reform discussion lengthens, the probability that someone will cite Kenneth Arrow approaches 1. Close behind is the probability that this person will cite Arrow inaccurately. Arrow sh...

Article

Entrepreneurship in Cuba: Uncertainty, Transaction Costs, and Stifled Potential

By Gregory Caskey

Note: The names of the Cuban entrepreneurs and their businesses described below have been changed to protect the identities of these individuals. "Don't try to understand this place. We don't understand it either." I heard versions of this refrain repeatedly fro...

Article

Medicare: We Were Warned

By Walter Donway

The year was 1965. I was a college sophomore. My family was middle class—not wealthy, watching the budget—and yet, health care was not a problem. In fact, I never heard my parents discuss it. We had our family physician, and if we needed a specialist, we saw one. Ho...

Book Review

Silicon Valley Humanists

By Arnold Kling

... the path forward will involve a reconciliation of a commitment to the free market, and its atomization and isolation of individual wants and needs, with the insatiable human desire for some form of collective experience and endeavor... the atomization of daily l...

March 2025

Article

Utopian Experiments and Three Morality Tales: Socialism in New Harmony, Indiana

By D. Eric Schansberg

[caption id="attachment_79185" align="alignnone" width="200"] New Harmony, Indiana[/caption] This year is the 200th anniversary of British industrialist Robert Owen's social experiments at New Harmony, Indiana—a utopian commune on 20,000 acres along the Wab...

Article

An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part III

By Tyler Cowen

Polities and Economics In the first article of this series, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer's epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I then turned to Homer's treatment of comparative political regimes in the second article. In this final essa...

Book Review

The Human Moral Mind

By Arnold Kling

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 Gr...

Article

Productivity and the Worth of Work in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina

By Richard Gunderman

Leo Tolstoy. This article was inspired by a recent Virtual Reading Group on Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, led by Richard Gunderman. Learn more about our Virtual Reading Groups at the Online Library of Liberty. Productivity is a measure of efficiency, tending to...

February 2025

Article

An Economic Approach to Homer’s Odyssey: Part II

By Tyler Cowen

The Polities of The Odyssey In the previous article, I outlined what an economic approach to reading Homer's epic, The Odyssey,1 might look like. I also noted that what most strikes me about The Odyssey is Homer's treatment of comparative political regimes. Looking...

Article

The Market Society Is a Pro-Social Society

By Walker Wright

Human beings are inherently pro-social creatures. Aristotle went so far as to refer to us as political animals, driven by our nature to create associations that culminate in the broader community of the polis. And our capacity for reciprocity, trust, and cooperation...

Book Review

The Psychology of Authoritarianism

By Arnold Kling

... [those] who score high on the authoritarianism scale agree that (italicized words are direct quotes from the scale) our country needs a mighty leader; that the leader should destroy opponents; that people should trust the judgment of the proper authorities, avoi...

Article

Undoing Past Policies: How Likely Are Repeals in the 119th Congress?

By Jordan Ragusa

After every presidential election, including the most recent, the new majority wants to repeal a list of previous regimes' policy enactments. Political observers always look to the next two years, wondering what to expect from the party in power. With the 2024 elect...