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 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.
Bankruptcy is common in America today. Notwithstanding two decades of largely uninterrupted economic growth, the annual bankruptcy filing rate has quintupled, topping 1.5 million individuals annually. Recent years also have seen several of the largest and most expensive corporate bankruptcies in history. This confluence of skyrocketing personal bankruptcies in a period of prosperity, an increasingly […]
Some of the most significant tax changes in recent years have concerned the taxation of capital income. In 2003, Congress cut the top tax rate on dividends to 15 percent—significantly greater than the zero dividend tax that President George W. Bush wanted, but far below the 40 percent many high-income individuals paid in 2000. The […]
Most of the energy consumed in America today is produced from the combustion of fossil fuels, primarily oil, coal, and natural gas. Energy can be generated, however, in any number of ways. Figure 1 indicates the sources of energy employed by the American economy as of February 2004. Figure 1 U.S. Energy Sources, 2004 The economy […]
In the world’s worst offending countries, corrupt government officials steal public money and collude with businesses to sell laws, rules, regulations, and government contracts. The World Bank reports that “higher levels of corruption are associated with lower per capita income” (World Bank 2001, p. 105). Corruption breeds poverty, and poverty kills. In other words, corruption […]
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.
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 2015, Angus Deaton was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science for his “analysis of consumption, poverty, and welfare.” One of his contributions that the Nobel Committee singled out was his 1980 article, co-authored with John Muellbauer, titled “An Almost Ideal Demand System,” on how demand for various consumption goods depends on prices and […]