A Fairness Trilemma in Hiring

What do the inventor of the periodic table, the novelist Isabel Allende, and the almost-creators of the iPhone have in common? Join author David Epstein and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts to explore a counterintuitive idea: that boundaries, and not unlimited freedom, often make us more creative, productive, and fulfilled.… MORE

Anne O. Krueger Introduction As an American economist studying international trade and protectionism, Anne Krueger had her own method: she traveled to poorer countries to talk, not just to government officials, but also to businesspeople in those countries. She also often asked to see the businesses’ books, not just the books that they prepared for… MORE

“There are two things you are better off not watching in the making: sausages and econometric estimates. This is a sad and decidedly unscientific state of affairs we find ourselves in. Hardly anyone takes data analyses seriously. Or perhaps more accurately, hardly anyone takes anyone else’s data analyses seriously.” That is the scathing critique that… MORE

The gold standard was a commitment by participating countries to fix the prices of their domestic currencies in terms of a specified amount of gold. National money and other forms of money (bank deposits and notes) were freely converted into gold at the fixed price. England adopted a de facto gold standard in 1717 after… MORE

I recently sat down with Milton Friedman, a few days before his 94th birthday, to discuss the impact of two of his most important contributions to economics and liberty: A Monetary History of the United States, 1870-1960 [co-written] with Anna Schwartz, and Capitalism and Freedom. The ideas in both books had tremendous influence on the… MORE

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one” — The Pirates of Penzance , Gilbert and Sullivan The Bank of England has decided to increase the interest rate at which she lends money to commercial banks from a very low 0.50 percent to 0.75. Not a breath-taking rise but still a change from the policy… MORE

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

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

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

  Carl Menger has the twin distinctions of being the founder of Austrian economics and a cofounder of the marginal utility revolution. Menger worked separately from William Jevons and Leon Walras and reached similar conclusions by a different method. Unlike Jevons, Menger did not believe that goods provide “utils,” or units of utility. Rather, he… MORE

The Austrian school of economics was founded in 1871 with the publication of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics. menger, along with william stanley jevons and leon walras, developed the marginalist revolution in economic analysis. Menger dedicated Principles of Economics to his German colleague William Roscher, the leading figure in the German historical school, which dominated economic… MORE

Adam Smith struggled with what came to be called the paradox of “value in use” versus “value in exchange.” Water is necessary to existence and of enormous value in use; diamonds are frivolous and clearly not essential. But the price of diamonds—their value in exchange—is far higher than that of water. What perplexed Smith is… MORE