Since the late 1950s, the regulation of risks to health and safety has taken on ever-greater importance in public policy debates—and actions. In its efforts to protect citizens against hard-to-detect hazards such as industrial chemicals and against obvious hazards in the workplace and elsewhere, Congress has created or increased the authority of the Food and […]
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 defining trait of urban areas is density: of people, activities, and structures. The defining trait of urban transportation is the ability to cope with this density while moving people and goods. Density creates challenges for urban transportation because of crowding and the expense of providing infrastructure in built-up areas. It also creates certain advantages […]
[Editor’s note: some of the data have changed since this article was written in 1992. The overall structure of the unemployment insurance, however, has remained intact.] The United States unemployment insurance program is intended to offset income lost by workers who lose their jobs as a result of employer cutbacks. The program, launched by […]
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 […]
Few economic indicators are of more concern to Americans than unemployment statistics. Reports that unemployment rates are dropping make us happy; reports to the contrary make us anxious. But just what do unemployment figures tell us? Are they reliable measures? What influences joblessness? How Is Unemployment Defined and Measured? Each month, the federal government’s Bureau […]
In macroeconomics, sometimes defined as the theory of the economy as a whole, issues covered include economic growth, fiscal policy, monetary policy, investment, national income accounts, the gold standard, and unemployment.
These entries are on various aspects of the labor market and include discrimination, the gender gap, immigration, job safety, and wages and working conditions.
Governments impose a variety of taxes. The analysis of taxes, therefore, requires multiple entries, including marginal tax rates, corporate taxation, and capital gains taxes.
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.
Eugene Fama shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. The three received the prize for “for their empirical analysis of stock prices.” Fama has played a key role in the development of modern finance, with major contributions to a broad range of topics within the field, beginning […]
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. […]