Featured Articles

Book Review

A Pro-Market and Pro-Social Economy

Book Review of The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World, by Samuel Gregg.1 In The Next American Economy (2022), Samuel Gregg provides a refreshing defense of free markets, emphasizing the need to frame the case for economic liberty within a broader narrative about America’s values and identity. We need this .. MORE

Book Review

The War That Never Ends

A Book Review of Manufacturing Militarism: U.S. Government Propaganda in the War on Terror, by Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall.1 It’s been over 20 years since the 9/11 attacks. Ever since those horrible attacks, the United States government has been waging a “war on terror” both at home and abroad. The war on .. MORE

Article

Prosperity Without a Price Tag

Every time a large event comes to a city, there’s a flurry of excitement over the gigantic economic impact that these events are supposed to generate. Examples abound, from the hundreds of millions of dollars of impact predicted for a host city of a political convention or Super Bowl, to the billions of dollars of .. MORE

Most Recent

Liberty

Limits on Self-Ownership?

By David Henderson

Economic and Political Philosophy

The Problem of Extreme Cases

By Pierre Lemieux

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Fewer Rules, Better People: How To Expand Discretion

By Kevin Corcoran

Supply-side Economics

The Middle Income Trap

By Scott Sumner

Finance, Risk, Uncertainty, Probability Theory

Inside the Mysterious World of Credit Cards (with Patrick McKenzie)

Politics and Economics

Two More Examples of the Nationalist’s Dilemma

By Scott Sumner

Economic and Political Philosophy

Contradictions Can Be Revealing: A Current Example

By Pierre Lemieux

Business Economics

My Weekly Reading for May 18, 2025

By David Henderson

Economic Growth

Cardwell’s Cage and How to Break Free

By Chelsea Follett

EconTalk

All >

econtalk-extra

Be AWED by Childhood

…people are utility monsters when it comes to themselves. But something happens when you have children. This is how Erik Hoel begins this thoughtful conversation with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. According to new parent Hoel, life is no longer “a constant, almost exhausting game of optimization.” He has found a great relief in no longer being .. MORE

econtalk-extra

Piling On the Problem of Poverty

What’s the best way to help the world’s poor? Should we give them cash or chickens? Or is the best way to eradicate poverty something else entirely? This episode, EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomed back Lant Pritchett, of Harvard’s Center for International Development. Their starting point was a series of “letters” attempting to answer these .. MORE

EconLog

All >

Liberty

California’s Decline, and Slight Rebound, in Press Freedom

  In two EconLog posts (“Canada’s Decline in Press Freedom,” August 24, 2021, and “Canada’s Decline in Press Freedom, Part 2,” December 14, 2021), I documented the fact that Canada’s federal government under Justin Trudeau was subsidizing journalism. This is an attack on press freedom. As I wrote in an article on this same issue .. MORE

Supply-side Economics

The Middle Income Trap

In America, the poor often face relatively high implicit marginal tax rates, because they lose many benefits as their incomes rise.  The Economist has an article discussing a similar situation in the UK, which affects the upper middle class, those earning over £100,000:  At £100,000, the removal of the tax-free allowance creates a 60% marginal .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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

Browse Articles

Book Titles

All Books >

The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics

By Edwin G. Dolan

In June 1974 the Institute for Humane Studies sponsored the first of a series of conferences on Austrian economics. This conference was held at Royalton College in South Royalton, Vermont, and attracted some fifty participants from all regions of the United States and three continents abroad. The conferees came to hear Israel M. Kirzner, Ludwig .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

The State Is Us (Perhaps), But Beware of It!

By Pierre Lemieux

A Liberty Classic Book Review of The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock.1 First published sixty years ago this year, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock‘s The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy is widely recognized as a seminal work in the development of the .. MORE

When Searching for Monsters to Destroy, What Do We Fail to Discover?

By Rosolino Candela

Book Review of In Search of Monsters to Destroy: The Folly of American Empire and the Paths to Peace, by Christopher J. Coyne.1 According to Ludwig von Mises, “economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics” ([1949] 2007, p. .. MORE

Conversations

VIDEO

A Conversation with Ronald H. Coase

Nobel laureate Ronald H. Coase (1910-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Coase’s articles, “The Problem of Social Cost” and “The Nature of the Firm” are among the most important and most often cited works in the whole of economic literature. Coase recounts how he tried to encourage .. MORE

VIDEO

A Conversation with James M. Buchanan, Parts I and II

Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Universally respected as one of the founders of the economics of public choice, he is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics, and economic .. MORE

Econlib Videos

Intellectual Portrait Series

Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time

Browse Videos

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

The Economics of Special Markets

Asset-Backed Securities

Of the array of creative financing techniques that came of age in the eighties, one that emerged from that tumultuous decade with its reputation intact is asset securitization. Asset-backed securities enable depository institutions, finance companies, and other corporations to “liquefy” their balance sheets (i.e., raise cash by borrowing against assets) and develop new sources of .. MORE

Economic Regulation, Government Policy, Labor, Taxes

Redistribution

The federal government has increasingly assumed responsibility for reducing poverty in America. Its primary approach is to expand programs that transfer wealth, supposedly from the better off to the poor. In 1962, federal transfers to individuals (not counting payments for goods and services provided or interest for money loaned) amounted to 5.2 percent of gross .. MORE

Corporations and Financial Markets , Economic Regulation, Economics of Legal Issues, Government Policy, The Marketplace

Insider Trading

“ Insider trading” refers to transactions in a company’s securities, such as stocks or options, by corporate insiders or their associates based on information originating within the firm that would, once publicly disclosed, affect the prices of such securities. Corporate insiders are individuals whose employment with the firm (as executives, directors, or sometimes rank-and-file employees) .. MORE

Quotes

Without theory, one can never understand the general underlying mechanisms that operate in different situations. If not harnessed to solving empirical puzzles, theoretical work can spin off under its own momentum, reflecting little of the empirical world.

-Elinor Ostrom

How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.

-Adam Smith Full Quote >>

… millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others.

-Leonard E. Read Full Quote >>