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 […]
The Library of Economics and Liberty carries the popular Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, edited by David R. Henderson.
This highly acclaimed economics encyclopedia was first published in 1993 under the title The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. It features easy-to-read articles by over 150 top economists, including Nobel Prize winners, over 80 biographies of famous economists, and many tables and charts illustrating economics in action. With David R. Henderson’s permission and encouragement, the Econlib edition of this work includes links, additions, and corrections.
Whenever people decide whether the advantages of a particular action are likely to outweigh its drawbacks, they engage in a form of benefit-cost analysis (BCA). In the public arena, formal BCA is a sometimes controversial technique for thoroughly and consistently evaluating the pros and cons associated with prospective policy changes. Specifically, it is an attempt […]
Consumers pay a higher price for brand-name products than for products that do not carry an established brand name. Because this involves paying extra for what some consider an identical product that merely has been advertised and promoted, brand names may appear to be economically wasteful. This argument was behind the decision to eliminate all […]
Before the Russian Revolution of 1917, “socialism” and “communism” were synonyms. Both referred to economic systems in which the government owns the means of production. The two terms diverged in meaning largely as a result of the political theory and practice of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924). Like most contemporary socialists, Lenin believed that socialism could not […]
Few observers and even few experts remember that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created in response to the 1959 imposition of import quotas on crude oil and refined products by the United States. In 1959, the U.S. government established the Mandatory Oil Import Quota program (MOIP), which restricted the amount of imported […]
As the category\'s name suggests, entries in this category are on important historical developments, two of the main ones being the Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression.
With the decline in transportation costs, especially across oceans, and the recent increase in trade barriers, topics in international trade has become even more important.
Sometimes defined as the theory of the economy as a whole, macroeconomics includes issues such as economic growth, fiscal policy, monetary policy, national income accounts, and unemployment.
With extensive government regulation of many industries, there are many entries on aspects of that regulation, in industries ranging from agriculture, airlines, and energy tp trucking and pharmaceuticals.
Arthur Okun is known mainly for Okun’s Law, which describes a linear relation between percentage-point changes in unemployment and percentage changes in gross national product. It states that for every percentage point that the unemployment rate falls, real GNP rises by 3 percent. Okun’s Law is based on data from the period between World War […]
In 1998, Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize “for his contributions to welfare economics.” Much of Sen’s early work was on issues raised by kenneth arrow’s “impossibility theorem.” Arrow had shown, much more generally than Condorcet had in 1785, that majority rules often lead to intransitivities. A majority may prefer a to b and b […]