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Book Review, Kling's Corner
Similarly, to advocate colorblindness is not to pretend you don’t notice race. To advocate colorblindness is to endorse an ethical principle: The colorblind principle: we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives. Coleman Hughes, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America1 (p. .. MORE
An Economist Looks at Europe
When in the West the philosophy of science, of ethics, and of politics is again taking the postmodern path of relativism and irrationality, there is nothing better than turning our eyes to Karl Popper (1902-1994) and his philosophy of critical rationalism. Philosophy as a problem On October 25, 1946, Karl Popper read a controversial paper .. MORE
An Economist Looks at Europe
Brexit is turning out to be a much more complicated affair than both the “remainers” and the “leavers” initially surmised. The hope of an amicable divorce is vanishing. The British Government and the European Commission are edging nearer the precipice of an unwanted and unplanned total break, which neither side really wants, though in the .. MORE
International Trade
Law and Institutions
Adam Smith
Law and Economics
Economic Methods
Obituaries
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Cross-country Comparisons
Incentives
International Trade
econtalk-podcast
To international law expert Eugene Kontorovich of George Mason University, all the arguments that make Israel out to be an occupying force collapse under the weight of a single, simple fact: A country cannot occupy territory to which it has a legal claim. Listen as Kontorovich speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the legal issues .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
How much of our success or failure is written in our genes? How much is under our control? Is it nature or nurture or is that dichotomy too simplistic? Hear EconTalk’s Russ Roberts and psychologist Paul Bloom discuss why the nature vs. nurture question is actually worth taking seriously and how by understanding it we .. MORE
Law and Economics
In late July 1933, President Roosevelt enacted one of the most destructive economic policies in all of American history. The President’s Re-employment Agreement mandated an immediate 20% rise in hourly nominal wages. The stock market crashed. This action aborted a promising economic recovery that had raised industrial production by 57% between March and July 1933. .. MORE
Economic Methods
A major assertion by the Trump Administration is that tariffs are paid for by foreigners. And, indeed, under very specific circumstances, a tariff may be paid in part or in whole by a foreign producer: if the importing country is a monopsony (or has significant market power), if the exporting country has price power, and .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
There are two versions of Thomas Robert Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population. The first, published anonymously in 1798, was so successful that Malthus soon elaborated on it under his real name. * The rewrite, culminating in the sixth edition of 1826, was a scholarly expansion and generalization of the first.Following his success with .. MORE
The Speeches contained in these two volumes have been selected and edited at the instance of the Club which was established for the purpose of inculcating and extending those political principles which are permanently identified with Cobden’s career. They form an important part of the collective contribution to political science, which has conferred on their .. MORE
A Liberty Classic Book Review of Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy, by E.G. West.1 As a society, we have become used to government involvement in education. We rarely subject such involvement to economic scrutiny or ask the historical question of whether its appearance was necessary. E.G. West’s book Education and the .. MORE
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
VIDEO
Recognized as one of the most influential voices in the areas of market structure, the theory of the firm, law and economics, resource unemployment, and monetary theory and policy, in this 2001 interview, Armen Alchian (1914-2013) outlines the “UCLA tradition” of economics which he founded and explores the many unanticipated consequences of self-seeking individual behavior. .. MORE
VIDEO
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
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.
The U.S. federal budget deficit is probably the world’s most cited economic statistic. In recent years U.S. debt has risen at what is widely believed to be an alarming rate and has almost tripled since 1981. [Editor’s note: this article was written in 1993. Since then the debt held by the public rose even further .. MORE
Telecommunications matters economically for two reasons. First, it plays a role perhaps second only to brain power in the operation and rapidly expanding productivity of the modern “information-based” economy; indeed, it supplies a primary technical means for productively harnessing the information and knowledge spread among individual economic actors throughout the global economic order. Second, the .. MORE
National industrial policy is a rubric for a broad range of proposed economic reforms that emerged as a unified political program in the early eighties. Had they been passed, these reforms would have given government officials additional authority, as well as the necessary fiscal and regulatory powers, to directly alter the country’s industrial structure. Proponents .. MORE
-Arthur Seldon
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