Featured Articles

Book Review

Sick of Metaphors: Reading Shiller’s Narrative Economics

Book Review of Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events.1 by Robert J. Shiller. And if you wish to adorn, borrow the metaphor from something better in the same genus, if to denigrate, from something worse. —Aristotle, Rhetoric III, 1404b It is an odd experience to be reading Robert J. Shiller’s .. MORE

Article

How We Failed Our Economics Students and Caused Low Government Approval Ratings

As of September 2019, less than 25 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing, according to a Gallup poll.1 Before one jumps to the conclusion that this low approval rating is due to the current political situation and controversies, let me also share that this is roughly identical to the average rating .. MORE

Article, Book Review

From Prometheus to Arcadia: Liberals, Conservatives, the Environment, and Cultural Cognition

Review of The Progressive Environmental Prometheans: Left-wing Heralds of a “Good Anthropocene.” by William B. Meyer1 Coming out of left field for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020, the Michael Moore-backed documentary Planet of the Humans (henceforth Planet) indicted wind, solar, and biomass-generated electricity as mining intensive and carbon fuel-dependent (whether it be .. MORE

Most Recent

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Great Moments in Compulsory Government IDs

By David Henderson

Politics and Economics

Is California turning to the right?

By Scott Sumner

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

Build, Baby, Build To Fight Climate Change

By Art Carden

The Tail Wags the Dog

By Jon Murphy

Politics and Economics

Do we understand elections?

By Scott Sumner

A Strange Turning Point

By Kevin Corcoran

College Economics Topics

Should You Be a College Professor?

By David Henderson

Monetary Policy

The Importance of Principles

By Scott Sumner

Energy, Environment, Resources

My Weekly Reading for November 17, 2024

By David Henderson

EconTalk

All >

econtalk-extra

To Float or Not to Float: Munger and Roberts on the [Un]examined Life

We’ve all been super excited waiting for the release of EconTalk host Russ Roberts’ new book, Wild Problems. It’s now out, and both I and Russ hope you all choose to read it! (How else will you catch the chapter on Bill Bellichick?!?!?) This episode is icing on the cake, as Russ brings back Mike .. MORE

econtalk-extra

Tales of a Heterodox Conservative

Milton Friedman may be of the most recognizable economists across our Econlib family, and especially so here at EconTalk. Friedman was a teacher of our beloved host Russ Roberts (as well as one of his first podcast interviewees), a Nobel laureate, a popular political lightning rod, and a best-selling author. When historian Jennifer Burns undertook .. MORE

EconLog

All >

Politics and Economics

Do we understand elections?

The media is full of analyses as to why Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in the recent election. At various times, I’ve mentioned factors like voter frustration over high inflation, illegal immigration, and woke excesses on college campuses. The more I think about the election, however, the less confidence I have in any single explanation. .. MORE

Uncategorized

A Strange Turning Point

I enjoy reading intellectual biographies – books dedicated to exploring how a particular person’s thinking evolved and developed through their lifetime. This, too, applies to intellectual autobiographies, where thinkers describe their own journey about how they came to believe what they believe. Of course, all such accounts should be taken with a pinch of salt. .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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

Browse Articles

Book Titles

All Books >

The Theory of Money and Credit

By Ludwig Mises

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) first published The Theory of Money and Credit in German, in 1912. The edition presented here is that published by Liberty Fund in 1980, which was translated from the German by H. E. Batson originally in 1934, with additions in 1953. Only a few corrections of obvious typos were made for .. MORE

A Treatise on Political Economy

By Jean-Baptiste Say

A NEW edition of this translation of the popular treatise of M. Say having been called for, the five previous American editions being entirely out of print, the editor has endeavoured to render the work more deserving of the favour it has received, by subjecting every part of it to a careful revision. As the .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Does Economics Need More than One Lesson?

By Michael D. Thomas

Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson,1 remains relevant for readers to this day. In print since its publication, the book has sold more than a million copies, has been translated into 10 languages, and in 2019 became inspiration for a new book, Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well and Why .. MORE

Enron’s Collapse at 20: Three Myths in Search of an Historian

By Roger Donway

A journalist is someone who knows all the facts of a story and none of the truth. That melancholy reflection is prompted by the twentieth anniversary of Enron’s historic collapse into bankruptcy: December 2, 2001. In its day, Enron’s bankruptcy was the largest in U.S. history, and, given Enron’s enormous prestige (voted “most innovative” of .. MORE

Conversations

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

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

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

Government Policy, Macroeconomics

Federal Deficit

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

The Economics of Special Markets

Computer Industry

Most economic theory ignores or underplays the contributions of technological progress. Mostly relegated to the realm of “exogenous factors” unaffected by economic policy, innovation enters the accounts chiefly as an effect of capital formation—the accumulation of buildings and equipment. Yet the most careful studies of the sources of productivity growth—by such economists as Lord Peter .. MORE

Economic Systems

Fascism

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, .. MORE

Quotes

Private enterprise has produced the wealth of the world; yet it has suffered more calumny and obloquy than any other system. Its alternative, state economy, has retarded the production of wealth; yet it has been lauded and deified. “Corrigible Capitalism, Incorrigible Socialism”

-Arthur Seldon

All plans of government, which suppose great reformations in the manners of mankind, are plainly imaginary.

-David Hume Full Quote >>

In the state of isolation, our wants exceed our productive capacities. In society, our productive capacities exceed our wants.

-Frederic Bastiat Full Quote >>