Socialism—defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production—was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty. Yet the idea and the ideal of socialism […]
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.
The fact of scarcity, which exists everywhere, guarantees that people will compete for resources. Markets are one way to organize and channel this competition. Politics is another. People use both markets and politics to get resources allocated to the ends they favor. Even in a democracy, however, political activity is startlingly different from voluntary exchange […]
A tariff is a fancy word for a tax. The term usually refers to import duties, which are fees levied on goods entering one country from another. Import tariffs have been a controversial feature of domestic politics, international diplomacy, and economic policy for centuries. This article covers some of the basic economics of tariffs as […]
The law of unintended consequences, often cited but rarely defined, is that actions of people—and especially of government—always have effects that are unanticipated or unintended. Economists and other social scientists have heeded its power for centuries; for just as long, politicians and popular opinion have largely ignored it. The concept of unintended consequences is one […]
Until recently, economists who analyzed sports focused on such things as the antitrust exemption, the alleged cartel behavior of sports leagues, and the player draft (see sports). Sportometrics is different. It is the application of economic theories to the behavior of athletes to explain what they do and to see if what they do can […]
Introduction Claudia D. Goldin is an American economic historian and labor economist who has dug deep into often-obscure data sources. She won the 2023 Nobel Prize in economics “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labor market outcomes.” One issue she has focused on is the gender gap, both in employment and in earnings. Indeed, […]
Economic historian Joel Mokyr’s work explains how ideas and culture generate compounding technological progress that can accumulate and sustain economic growth. For this work, he, along with Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for “having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress.” Joel Mokyr. Photo courtesy […]