Book Review, Kling's Corner
Article
Friedrich A. Hayek Is there a right to education? Even in today’s polarized political environment in the United States, the overwhelming majority of citizens think there is such a right, and many hold that it applies through the completion of college.1 Every one of the fifty state constitutions includes language providing for free public education, .. MORE
Article
After months of debate, and substantial changes along the way, this summer Congress successfully enacted a landmark package of tax and spending cuts, a key component of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” (HR 1) will reduce taxes by around $4.5 trillion while also cutting roughly $1.5 trillion in federal spending. It is .. MORE
Book Review
Book Review of: Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–and How to Bring It Back by Marc J. Dunkelman,1; and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.2 Vera Coking and the Cost of Progress In 1961, Vera Coking and her husband purchased a home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They paid $20,000 for the modest three-story .. MORE
Economic History
Property Rights
Incentives
International Trade
Economic Education
Central Planning
Cryptocurrency
Property Rights
econtalk-podcast
Former submarine commander David Marquet joins EconTalk’s Russ Roberts to explore how distancing–thinking like someone else, somewhere else, or sometime else–can unlock better choices in business and life. They talk about leadership without giving orders, how to empower teams, and what it means to see yourself as a coach rather than a boss. Along the way, they discuss .. MORE
econtalk-extra
Diane Coyle is the Bennett Professor of Public Policy at University of Cambridge and the founder of Enlightenment Economics. Coyle is also an author, and her book, The Economics of Enough, is the topic of conversation in this episode as she and Roberts discuss the financial crisis, responsible economic action for the future, and the hidden .. MORE
Economic Education
Timothy Taylor, at Conversable Economist, had a post on August 13 titled “What Economic Ideas are True and Nontrivial?” He starts with a famous story that Paul Samuelson told and I’ll quote it here: [O]ur subject puts its best foot forward when it speaks out on international trade. This was brought home to me years .. MORE
International Trade
Short Version: it’s bad, even by the preferred metrics of protectionists. On July 23, US and Japanese trade negotiators reached a deal on tariffs, investments, and other international transactions. Much has been written about how bad the deal is from a standard economic perspective (see, for example, here). But President Trump and his administration, who .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
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
I must have been forty years old before reading Frederic Bastiat’s classic The Law. An anonymous person, to whom I shall eternally be in debt, mailed me an unsolicited copy. After reading the book I was convinced that a liberal-arts education without an encounter with Bastiat is incomplete. Reading Bastiat made me keenly aware of .. MORE
A Book Review of Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy, by Mario J. Rizzo and Glen Whitman.1 Are you saving enough for retirement? How do you know? How can I tell? What if there is a benchmark against which to compare your savings? If you meet it, all is well. But what if .. MORE
In 1936, seven years into the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was published. The culmination of Keynes’ theorizing in support of policies of manipulation of money and credit by the state in order to achieve macroeconomic equilibrium came with that book. A central bank, in that context, became .. MORE
VIDEO
Recognized as one of the most influential voices in the areas of market structure, the theory of the firm, law and economics, resource unemployment, and monetary theory and policy, in this 2001 interview, Armen Alchian (1914-2013) outlines the “UCLA tradition” of economics which he founded and explores the many unanticipated consequences of self-seeking individual behavior. .. 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
Econlib Videos
Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time
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.
Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.
These free resources are appropriate for teachers of high school and AP economics, social studies, and history classes. They are also appropriate for interested students, home schoolers, and newcomers to the topic of economics.
Is capitalism good? Should we admire hard workers who are motivated to make large profits? Does competition bring out the best in people? These questions juxtapose practices and institutions that economists study (capitalism, profits, competition) with concepts that ethicists use (good, admirable, best). Ethics studies values and virtues. A value is a good to be .. MORE
There is no widely accepted definition of capital flight. The classic use of the term is to describe widespread currency speculation, especially when it leads to cross-border movements of private funds that are large enough to affect national financial markets. The distinction between “flight” and normal capital outflows is thus a matter of degree, much .. MORE
To most people, capital means a bank account, a hundred shares of IBM stock, assembly lines, or steel plants in the Chicago area. These are all forms of capital in the sense that they are assets that yield income and other useful outputs over long periods of time. But such tangible forms of capital are .. MORE
-Israel Kirzner
-Adam Smith Full Quote >>
-John Stuart Mill Full Quote >>