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Book Review
Pirate Enlightenment: Some Treasures, Some Toils
Book Review of Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber.1 In the Preface of Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia by David Graeber, he states that he hopes to provide a fun read that illustrates that the pirate society of Madagascar (1690-1750) lives up to the story of a pirate utopia called Libertalia
Featured Articles
Book Review, Kling's Corner
Social Psychology and Business
Many of the books I’ve relied on most heavily were published within the last decade or so. These include Blueprint (2019), The Goodness Paradox (2019), Social (2013), The Ape That Understood the Universe (2018), The Folly of Fools (2011), Everybody Lies (2017), Why Everybody Else Is a Hypocrite (2010), The Elephant in the Brain (2017), .. MORE
Article
Who Really Gains from Billions in Economic Development Incentives?
How much is it worth for a large company, such as Boeing, to build a plant in your town? How about $1 billion dollars? That’s roughly the amount of so-called ‘incentives’ given in 2009 by the State of South Carolina to Boeing for building its plant in the Charleston area where I live. To put .. MORE
Article
The Fragility of Civil Society
Friedrich Hayek Philosopher-economist Friedrich Hayek remains profoundly relevant, even three decades after his death in 1992 at the age of 92. Hayek received the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics for having advanced a simple but seemingly paradoxical theme: civil society as we know it emerged from “human action” but not from “human design.”1 This is .. MORE
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Business Economics
Does a Trade Deficit Imply Trade Debt?
Business Economics
Is Capitalism Soulless?
Economic Philosophy
The Unbearable Lightness of Collectivism
Economic Education
Compensating Differentials and Job Desirability
Growth
Flourishing in the Future
Macroeconomics
Newcomb’s Paradox and the Banality of Success
Moral Reasoning
On Claudine Gay, Charles Fried Blows Reasoning 101
EconTalk
Money/Macro: Who is the GOAT?
Cost-benefit Analysis
Effective Altruism as a New Year’s Resolution?
EconTalk
All >econtalk-podcast
From the Second Intifada to October 7th (with Daniel Gordis)
Over the 25 years he’s lived in Israel, author Daniel Gordis of Shalem College has seen many chapters of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, beginning with the Second Intifada that followed the Oslo Accords. Listen as he and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts discuss why Hamas’s massacre of October 7th is different and is an existential threat to Israel. .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
Michael Heller and James Salzman on Mine!
Law professors Michael Heller and James Salzman talk about their book, Mine! with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Heller and Salzman argue that ownership is trickier and more complicated than it looks. While we tend to think of something as either mine or not mine, there’s often ambiguity and a continuum about who owns what. Salzman .. MORE
EconLog
All >Business Economics
Is Capitalism Soulless?
One of the ideas that has bugged me over the years is the claim that capitalism is soulless. In a literal sense, of course, it has to be soulless because it’s a system, not a person. But the term is used so often that it’s important to examine the claim more closely. Don Boudreaux does .. MORE
Economic Education
Compensating Differentials and Job Desirability
Here’s a seemingly simple question: Are high-paying jobs desirable? It seems like the answer here is an obvious “yes.” But there’s more to the story; otherwise, this would probably set a record for the shortest blog post on this website. So, what are the subtleties here? The reason the answer might seem like an obvious .. MORE
LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
Book Titles
All Books >A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s “Spirit of Laws”
Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836) composed A Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws in 1811. It was promptly translated to English by Thomas Jefferson, who published it along with translations of M. Condorcet’s “Observations on the [Twenty-ninth] Book” (the original cover page produced by William Duane’s Philadelphia press erroneously reads as .. MORE
Protection or Free Trade
IN this book I have endeavored to determine whether protection or free trade better accords with the interests of labor, and to bring to a common conclusion on this subject those who really desire to raise wages.I have not only gone over the ground generally traversed, and examined the arguments commonly used, but, carrying the .. MORE
Book Reviews and Suggested Readings
Is Inequality a Problem?
Book Review of The Poor and the Plutocrats: From the Poorest of the Poor to the Richest of the Rich (Oxford University Press 2021) by Francis Teal.1 Is inequality a problem? Many people seem to think so, if we judge the public discussions in Europe and the United States over the last decade or so. .. MORE
Put Away the Puppets
A Book Review of Escaping Paternalism: Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy, by Mario J. Rizzo and Glen Whitman.1 Are you saving enough for retirement? How do you know? How can I tell? What if there is a benchmark against which to compare your savings? If you meet it, all is well. But what if .. MORE
Conversations
VIDEO
A Conversation with Gary S. Becker
Gary Becker (1930-2014) was one of the most original and pathbreaking economists of modern times. His 1992 Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences was described as his “having extended the domain of microeconomic analysis to a wide range of human behaviour and interaction, including nonmarket behavior.” Becker’s early work on discrimination led to his further work .. MORE
VIDEO
Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society
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
Econlib Videos
Intellectual Portrait Series
Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time
Guides
Reading Lists by Topic
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.
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.
High School Economics Topics
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.
From the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
Economic Regulation, Government Policy
Trucking Deregulation
Regulation The federal government has been regulating prices and competition in interstate transportation ever since Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to oversee the railroad industry in 1887. Truckers were brought under the control of the ICC in 1935 after persistent lobbying by state regulators, the ICC itself, and especially, the railroads, which had .. MORE
Basic Concepts, Economic Regulation, Government Policy
Price Controls
Governments have been trying to set maximum or minimum prices since ancient times. The Old Testament prohibited interest on loans to fellow Israelites; medieval governments fixed the maximum price of bread; and in recent years, governments in the United States have fixed the price of gasoline, the rent on apartments in New York City, and .. MORE
Labor
Discrimination
Many people believe that only government intervention prevents rampant discrimination in the private sector. Economic theory predicts the opposite: market mechanisms impose inescapable penalties on profits whenever for-profit enterprises discriminate against individuals on any basis other than productivity. Though bigoted managers may hold sway for a time, in the long run the profit penalty makes .. MORE
Quotes
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
This, then, is freedom in the external life of man—that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows. Ludwig von Mises, Socialism
-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>
To a real wise man the judicious and well-weighted approbation of a single wise man, gives more heartfelt satisfaction than all the noisy applauses of ten thousand ignorant though enthusiastic admirers.
-Adam Smith Full Quote >>