economic cost, human cost, opportunity cost, virtue signalling
Featured Article
“Nothing unique about roads causes them to be congested, expensive, and irrationally placed.” Every week, millions of Americans put up with long delays on crumbling roads. Most people take it for granted that if they commute to work in a major city, this is simply the way commutes have to be. They are wrong. Privately .. MORE
Featured Article
“The FDA treats peanuts very differently than drugs like Vioxx, even though both have benefits but pose serious risks to some segment of the population.” Why do we need the U.S. Food and Drug Administration? Easy. Using unproven medicines is equivalent to playing Russian roulette, and profit-hungry drug companies may sell us harmful or unnecessary .. MORE
Article
As if Washington was not busy enough internationally, serious Korea analysts wonder if Northeast Asia could erupt in flames. North Korea is rewriting its constitution to drop plans for peaceful reunification with the Republic of Korea, declaring the South to be the North’s “primary foe and invariable principal enemy.” Worse, Pyongyang celebrated the approach of .. MORE
International Trade
Economics and Culture
Price Controls
Economic and Political Philosophy
Economics and Culture
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Energy, Environment, Resources
Artificial Intelligence
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
econtalk-podcast
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-podcast
Political Scientist and author Terry Moe of Stanford University talks about his book, The Politics of Institutional Reform with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Moe explores the politics and effectiveness of educational reform in the New Orleans public school system in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Moe finds that policy-makers turned to charter schools for pragmatic .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Five Fiscal Truths by Ryan Bourne, Cato at Liberty, April 18, 2024. Excerpt: The recorded federal deficit from 2023, at $1.7 trillion (or 6.3 percent of gross domestic product, or GDP), was 23 percent higher than in 2022, but even that was pushed artificially downward by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recording the Supreme Court’s .. MORE
Price Controls
California has some of the strictest insurance regulations in the country. It is the only state where insurers are not allowed to base their rate hikes on catastrophe models — forward-looking calculations of risk — or the rising cost of reinsurance premiums, according to both Zimmerman and the Department of Insurance. Under current regulations, insurers are only .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
Great difficulties are met with in stating a clear and straightforward exposition of price theory because of the fact that the given conditions or data of the problem are so different according to the length of the time period which the explanation takes into account. The forces which immediately regulate prices are different from those .. MORE
WE, the COMMISSIONERS appointed by YOUR MAJESTY to make a diligent and full inquiry into the practical operation of the Laws for the Relief of the Poor in England and Wales, and into the manner in which those laws are administered, and to report our opinion whether any and what alterations, amendments, or improvements may .. MORE
A Book Review of Immigration and Freedom, by Chandran Kukathas.1 Freedom is “in some way a very ordinary thing, consisting in not being hindered or obstructed in the pursuit of our everyday ends, or watched as we go about our business, or prevented from associating with others.” In his book Immigration and Freedom, Chandran Kukathas .. MORE
A Book Review of Hitler: The Politics of Seduction, by Rainer Zitelmann.1 One could truly say that there is no end to books about Adolph Hitler. Every year brings new works to add to the library already in print. This despite there being what most regard as a definitive biography in the shape of Ian .. MORE
VIDEO
A professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and a primary figure in Chicago School Economics and in the field of Law and Economics, Harold Demsetz has contributed original research on the theory of the firm, regulation in markets, industrial organization, antitrust policy, transaction costs, externalities, and .. MORE
VIDEO
Israel Kirzner, Professor Emeritus at NYU, is among the foremost scholars in the continuing development of the Austrian school of economic theory. He has extended our understanding of the workings of a free society, illuminated the role of entrepreneurs in the process of economic discovery, and shed new light on the dynamics of market forces. .. MORE
Econlib Videos
Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time
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.
In late 1989 the countries of Eastern Europe broke loose from the Soviet Union, threw off communism, and began to construct democratic institutions and market-oriented economies. This great transformation is founded on the idea that freedom and prosperity can best be advanced by adopting the institutions and practices that have proven successful in Western Europe .. MORE
Major league sports, as every reader of the sports pages knows, is a major league business. As a result, economics has a lot to say about how players, teams, and leagues will act under different circumstances. But would you believe that economics can be used to predict which teams will win and which will lose? .. MORE
Positive externalities are benefits that are infeasible to charge to provide; negative externalities are costs that are infeasible to charge to not provide. Ordinarily, as Adam Smith explained, selfishness leads markets to produce whatever people want; to get rich, you have to sell what the public is eager to buy. Externalities undermine the social benefits .. MORE
-Elinor Ostrom
-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>
-Frederic Bastiat Full Quote >>