Few subjects in economics have caused so much confusion—and so much groundless fear—in the past four hundred years as the thought that a country might have a deficit in its balance of payments. This fear is groundless for two reasons: (1) there never is a deficit, and (2) it would not necessarily hurt anything if […]
The Library of Economics and Liberty carries the popular Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, edited by David R. Henderson.
This highly acclaimed economics encyclopedia was first published in 1993 under the title The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. It features easy-to-read articles by over 150 top economists, including Nobel Prize winners, over 80 biographies of famous economists, and many tables and charts illustrating economics in action. With David R. Henderson’s permission and encouragement, the Econlib edition of this work includes links, additions, and corrections.
“ Free market” is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services. Thus, when I buy […]
[For an update, see Occupational Licensing, by Edward J. Timmons] Most Americans know that practicing medicine without a license is against the law. They also know that lawyers and dentists must have the state’s approval before they can ply their trades. Few Americans, however, would guess that in some states falconers, ferret breeders, and palm […]
Many people believe that employers do not care about workplace safety. If the government were not regulating job safety, they contend, workplaces would be unsafe. In fact, employers have many incentives to make workplaces safe. Since the time of Adam Smith, economists have observed that workers demand “compensating differentials” (i.e., wage premiums) for the risks […]
“Capitalism,” a term of disparagement coined by socialists in the mid-nineteenth century, is a misnomer for “economic individualism,” which Adam Smith earlier called “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty” (Wealth of Nations). Economic individualism’s basic premise is that the pursuit of self-interest and the right to own private property are morally defensible and […]
This category ranges widely over various government policies, but mainly covers economy-wide policies on taxes, government spending, government debt and deficits, redistribution, welfare, and monetary policy.
With the decline in transportation costs, especially across oceans, and the recent increase in trade barriers, topics in international trade has become even more important.
Sometimes defined as the theory of the economy as a whole, macroeconomics includes issues such as economic growth, fiscal policy, monetary policy, national income accounts, and unemployment.
Partly because of the economy-wide effects of money and banking, and partly because of the specific government policies that regulate the money supply and banking, there is a separate category to cover those issues. The entries include bank runs, the Federal Reserve system, and the Savings and Loan crisis.
In 2003, econometrician Robert Engle, along with econometrician Clive Granger, received the Nobel Prize in economics. Engle’s prize was “for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility (ARCH).” ARCH stands for “autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity.” The name is complex, but the idea can be grasped. Many data vary randomly about a constant mean. […]
Gerard Debreu’s contributions are in general equilibrium theory—highly abstract theory about whether and how each market reaches equilibrium. In a famous paper coauthored with Kenneth Arrow and published in 1954, Debreu proved that under fairly unrestrictive assumptions, prices exist that bring markets into equilibrium. In his 1959 book, The Theory of Value, Debreu introduced […]