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Reflections from Latin America

That Haunting Chilean Model

“A spectre is haunting Latin America; the spectre of the ‘Chilean model'”, wrote Chilean novelist Carlos Franz in a most brilliant essay.1 It is certainly not a terrifying ghost nor is it a ghoulish apparition that announces itself by dragging chains in the dark. The reason why Mr. Franz deems the Chilean model a “spectre” .. MORE

Reflections from Latin America

Grey Anatomy

I am back in Bogotá, this time to write an adaptation of “Grey’s Anatomy” aimed at Latin American audiences. People at Disney think it is an experiment worth trying and so does the local co-producer. Everyone around me looks jubilant and thrilled at the idea of a medical melodrama set in a big Latin American .. MORE

Book Review, Kling's Corner

The Pre-Modern Order

Pre-industrial society was characterized by low degrees of economic, political and cultural integration. By contrast, a high degree of integration in all three respects is the hallmark of modernity… Economically, modernity breeds integration by its systematic division of labour. All members of modern society specialize in a single economic activity, offering their labour, skill or .. MORE

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Conversation Arts: Civility, Incivility, and Persuasion

The Top EconTalk Conversations of 2023 (with Russ Roberts)

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

My Weekly Reading for April 28, 2024

By David Henderson

Economics of Crime

Robert MacNeil’s Axiom

By David Henderson

Incentives

The Economist‘s Irrational Fear

By Pierre Lemieux

International Macroeconomics

The Centralization of Power

By Scott Sumner

Incentives

Follow the Money

By Peter Calcagno

Economics of Health Care

Is Nationalism Bad for Your Health?

By Scott Sumner

Economics and Culture

In Defense of Seeking the Truth

By Kevin Corcoran

EconTalk

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econtalk-podcast

Seeking Immortality (with Paul Bloom)

Would an AI simulation of your dead loved one be a blessing or an abomination? And if you knew that after your own death, your loved ones would create a simulation of you, how would that knowledge change the way you choose to live today? These are some of the questions psychologist Paul Bloom discusses with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts as we stand on the threshold .. MORE

econtalk-extra

Would you automate your conscience if you could?

It seems obvious that moral artificial intelligence would be better than the alternative. Can we make AI’s values align with ours, and would we want to? This is the question underlying this conversation between EconTalk host Russ Roberts and psychologist Paul Bloom. Setting aside (at least for now) the question of whether AI will become smarter, .. MORE

EconLog

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Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

My Weekly Reading for April 28, 2024

Yet Another Drug War Failure by Ted Galen Carpenter, antiwar.com, April 23, 2024. Excerpt: Despite such spectacular policy failures, drug warriors in the United States and other countries cling to hard-line strategies and refuse to face an inconvenient economic truth.  Governments are not able to dictate whether people use mind-altering substances.  Such vices have been .. MORE

Economics of Crime

Robert MacNeil’s Axiom

Pierre Lemieux’s excellent post on The Economist‘s dismissal of an argument against gun control reminded me of a line from, I think, one of Robert MacNeil’s books. He said, “It has always been axiomatic to me that easy access to firearms would lead to more crime, in particular, homicide.” See the problem? It’s not axiomatic. .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.

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Book Titles

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Essays: Glamorgan Pamphlets, vols. 8-11

By Jane Haldimand Marcet

Published Under the Superintendence of the Society for the Improvement of the Working Population in the County of Glamorgan

Capital, Interest, and Rent: Essays in the Theory of Distribution

By Frank A. Fetter

The present volume includes all of the essays in which Fetter developed and presented his theory of distribution; the only important writings excluded are his two treatises: The Principles of Economics (New York: The Century Co., 1910) and Economic Principles (New York: The Century Co., 1915)…. [From the Preface by Murray N. Rothbard]

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Hayek, Mises, and the Methodology of the Social Sciences

By Adam Martin

The Fortunes of Liberalism1 collects a wide-ranging number of Friedrich. A. Hayek’s articles, reviews, addresses, and even obituaries—35 in total—spanning all seven decades of his scholarly career from the 1920s to the 1980s. To call this collection eclectic is an understatement, but the unifying theme is Hayek’s perspective on thinkers who have some connection to .. MORE

Rules for Non-Radicals

By M. Scott King

A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy, by Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan.1 Geoffrey Brennan and James Buchanan’s The Reason of Rules is remarkable. It is an important book, and the questions that the authors wrestle with are massive. When so much academic work feels as though it .. MORE

Conversations

VIDEO

Profile in Liberty: Friedrich A. Hayek

The twentieth century witnessed the unparalleled expansion of government power over the lives and livelihoods of individuals. Much of this was the result of two devastating world wars and totalitarian ideologies that directly challenged individual liberty and the free institutions of the open society. Other forms of expansion in the provision of social welfare and .. MORE

VIDEO

A Conversation with Milton Friedman

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

Econlib Videos

Intellectual Portrait Series

Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time

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Guides

College Economics Topics

Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.

Economist Biographies

From the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Basic Concepts, Macroeconomics

Recessions

One of the most popular definitions of recessions is that they are periods when real gross national product (GNP) has declined for at least two consecutive quarters. In 1990, real GNP declined between the third and fourth quarters and again between the fourth quarter of 1990 and the first quarter of 1991. Hence, there is .. MORE

Basic Concepts, Money and Banking

Interest

Interest is the price people pay to have resources now rather than later. Resources, of course, can be anything from college tuition to a big-screen TV. Interest is conventionally expressed as a percentage rate for a period of one year. If borrowers (those who want resources now) can obtain the resources from lenders (those who .. MORE

Corporations and Financial Markets , Government Policy, Taxes

Capital Gains Taxes

What Is Capital? The term “capital” refers to produced goods used to produce future goods. Even a corner lemonade stand could not exist without capital; the lemons and the stand are the essential capital that makes the enterprise operate. A recent study by Dale Jorgenson of Harvard University discovered that almost half of the growth .. MORE

Quotes

Private enterprise has produced the wealth of the world; yet it has suffered more calumny and obloquy than any other system. Its alternative, state economy, has retarded the production of wealth; yet it has been lauded and deified. “Corrigible Capitalism, Incorrigible Socialism”

-Arthur Seldon

The market economy is the product of a long evolutionary process. It is the outcome of man’s endeavors to adjust his action in the best possible way to the given conditions of his environment that he cannot alter.

-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>

When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law. Frederic Bastiat, The Law

-Frederic Bastiat Full Quote >>