International Development and Third World Poverty, War, Peace, Violence
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President Donald Trump tells us we are “getting killed on trade”1 and stresses the country’s trade deficit. As a piece of language, however, “trade deficit” is almost as misleading as “getting killed on trade.” “Deficit,” like “getting killed,” has a negative valence, but it is phony. In a trade, one thing—a good or service—is exchanged .. MORE
Reflections from Latin America
To me it is simply a mystery why the Spanish edition of William Easterly’s The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economist’s Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT Press, 2002) has gone almost unnoticed to both reviewers and readers in Latin America. Yet, it is hard to think of a book so relevant to the debate .. MORE
Book Review
A Book Review of Colonial Ecology, Atlantic Economy: Transforming Nature in Early New England, by Strother E. Roberts. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2019.1 What do beavers in Connecticut have to do with sugar in Barbados? A lot, it seems. So much, actually, that, if I may push the argument that Strother Roberts makes in Colonial .. MORE
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econtalk-podcast
Economist and author Daron Acemoglu of MIT discusses his book Power and Progress with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Acemoglu argues that the productivity and prosperity that results from innovation is not always shared widely across the population. He makes the case for the importance of regulating new technologies to ensure that the benefits of innovation are distributed equitably.
econtalk-podcast
How much care do you take when you make a donation to a charity? What careers make the biggest difference when it comes to helping others? William MacAskill of Oxford University and the author of Doing Good Better talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book and the idea of effective altruism. MacAskill urges .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
It is a relatively uncontroversial result, confirmed by a number of econometric studies, that economic freedom has a positive effect on incomes (GDP per capita). An econometric study to appear in the European Journal of Political Economy, “Revisiting the Relationship Between Economic Freedom and Development to Account for Statistical Deception by Autocratic Regimes,” argues that .. MORE
International Trade
George Mason University economics professor Don Boudreaux gave an excellent Zoom talk last week to a group I’m part of: the Stanford Classical Liberals. One of the things I most enjoy about Don’s talks is his nailing each point with loads of relevant data. The other thing, which is rare nowadays, is the perspective .. MORE
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continued relevance of our classic titles.
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776. This edition of Smith’s work is based on Edwin Cannan’s careful 1904 compilation (Methuen and Co., Ltd) of Smith’s fifth edition of the book (1789), the final edition in Smith’s lifetime. Cannan’s preface and introductory remarks .. MORE
Intrigue, murder, posthumous plagiarism, citations by Adam Smith, rediscovery by William Stanley Jevons a century later, and a stunning work on entrepreneurial risk, money, foreign exchange, and banking from the 1700s–what more could one ask for from an 18th century economist? Richard Cantillon offers fascination for historians and economists as much in death as he .. MORE
Is the United States victimized by trade? What causes trade deficits? Are higher tariffs a good idea? Can manufacturing jobs return to the United States? Economist Doug Irwin of Dartmouth College answers these questions and more in this wide-ranging conversation with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts.
Book Review of: Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–and How to Bring It Back by Marc J. Dunkelman,1; and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.2 Vera Coking and the Cost of Progress In 1961, Vera Coking and her husband purchased a home in Atlantic City, New Jersey. They paid $20,000 for the modest three-story .. MORE
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The twentieth century witnessed the unparalleled expansion of government power over the lives and livelihoods of individuals. Much of this was the result of two devastating world wars and totalitarian ideologies that directly challenged individual liberty and the free institutions of the open society. Other forms of expansion in the provision of social welfare and .. 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.
Foreign aid as a form of capital flow is novel in both its magnitude and its global coverage. Though historical examples of countries paying “bribes” (see below) or “reparations” to others are numerous, the continuing large-scale transfer of capital from rich-country governments to those of poor countries is a post–World War II phenomenon. The origins .. MORE
[Editor’s note: this article was written in 1992.] The development experiences of Third World countries since the fifties have been staggeringly diverse—and hence very informative. Forty years ago the developing countries looked a lot more like each other than they do today. Take India and South Korea. By any standards, both countries were extremely .. MORE
A tariff is a fancy word for a tax. The term usually refers to import duties, which are fees levied on goods entering one country from another. Import tariffs have been a controversial feature of domestic politics, international diplomacy, and economic policy for centuries. This article covers some of the basic economics of tariffs as .. MORE
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