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“Dube et al. are merely placing a ceiling on how bad the employment drop will likely be.” U.S. government officials at all levels are either discussing or have already implemented increases in the minimum wage. It is unsurprising that union leaders generally support such measures, but at this point, more than 600 economists—including seven Nobel .. MORE
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Elinor Ostrom Introduction The commons are the typical example in which self-interested individual actions do not aggregate into beneficial collective outcomes, as judged by members of the community themselves. They are the main counter-example to Adam Smith’s logic of the invisible hand, according to which self-interested consumer and producer behavior in markets lead to efficient .. MORE
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Image of Adam Smith in the style of Cezanne. Generated by DALL-E OpenAI software, based on public domain material. Many scholars, especially from other disciplines, have voiced concerns regarding a simplified interpretation of Adam Smith’s ideas in modern economics, asserting that it has been exploited to advance a particular free market ideology. For example, in .. MORE
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econtalk-podcast
Dwayne Betts was a 16-year-old in solitary confinement when a fellow inmate slid a book of poetry under his cell door. What happened next is an astounding story of transformation: from desperation to the discovery of beauty, even behind bars. Listen as the lawyer, prison reform advocate, and award-winning poet explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
Did an 800-year old piece of parchment really change the world? Nicholas Vincent of the University of East Anglia talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Magna Carta, the founding document of English law and liberty. The Magna Carta was repudiated just ten weeks after King John issued it. Yet, its impact is still .. MORE
Political Economy
The speech that President Biden gave at Pointe du Hoc (Normandie, France) in celebration of D-Day echoed a naïve and widespread conception of democracy. The general theory goes like this: Democracy is a system where the voter is in power. He is well-informed and votes to express his interest in the public goods that the .. MORE
Economic Growth
A few years ago, I answered the question in this post’s title in the negative: It seems to me that human progress is very uneven: Technology: Very rapid progressScience: Rapid Progress Public morals: Slow progressSports: Slow progress Human personalities: No progressArt: No progress Now, I wonder if this judgment was too hasty. Perhaps I was .. MORE
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The theory of spontaneous order has a long tradition in the history of social thought, yet it would be true to say that, until the last decade, it was all but eclipsed in the social science of the twentieth century. For much of this period the idea of spontaneous order—that most of those things of .. MORE
WHEN a man sets out upon any course of inquiry, the object of his search may be either light or fruit—either knowledge for its own sake or knowledge for the sake of good things to which it leads. In various fields of study these two ideals play parts of varying importance. In the appeal made .. MORE
An Essay and Book Review of The Essential UCLA School of Economics, by David R. Henderson and Steven Globerman.1 When you think about dinosaurs—which you should; dinosaurs are awesome—you always end up with the same two questions: where did they come from and where did they go? Yes, all life evolves through a process that .. MORE
Introduction Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a non-mainstream economic doctrine, has recently emerged from popular and academic obscurity to become a hot topic. Enthusiastically embraced by assorted progressive politicians, MMT allegedly demonstrates that such expansive government programs as the Green New Deal will not impose significant financial burdens on government. Economists critical of the theory range .. MORE
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Recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Milton Friedman (1912-2006) has long been recognized as one of our most important economic thinkers and a leader of the Chicago school of economics. He is the author of many books and articles in economics, including A Theory of the Consumption Function and A Monetary History .. MORE
VIDEO
On April 10, 2013, Liberty Fund and Butler University sponsored a symposium, “Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society.” The evening began with solo presentations by the three participants–Michael Munger of Duke University, Robert Skidelsky of the University of Warwick, and Richard Epstein of New York University. (Travel complications forced the fourth invited participant, James Galbraith .. MORE
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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.
The marginal tax rate is the rate on the last dollar of income earned. This is very different from the average tax rate, which is the total tax paid as a percentage of total income earned. In 2003, for example, the United States imposed a 35 percent tax on every dollar of taxable income above .. 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
On the topic of international trade, the views of economists tend to differ from those of the general public. There are three principal differences. First, many noneconomists believe that it is more advantageous to trade with other members of one’s nation or ethnic group than with outsiders. Economists see all forms of trade as equally .. MORE
-Arthur Seldon
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