The Economist Who Forgot Economics

What does a failed 19th-century Chinese civil exam and one of the deadliest wars in history have to do with how we hire, educate, and test people today? In this EconTalk conversation, Russ Roberts and education expert Daisy Christodoulou trace a surprising thread from the Taiping Rebellion through Britain’s Northcote-Trevelyan reforms, Samuel Pepys’s naval exams, and… MORE

In the last thirty years or so, the United States has seen persistent shortages of housing, waste disposal facilities, electricity generation, and oil refineries. More recently, we have begun to see the difficulties in building data centers, portending new shortages. This is confusing in a wealthy nation. A “shortage” occurs when there is too little… MORE

He lost his childhood homes, dozens of family members, and most of his hearing in his left ear to Israeli bombs, yet Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib insists that Palestinians must also take responsibility for Gaza’s destruction and for peace. Most Gazans, he insists, have turned against Hamas for oppressing them, enriching itself, and bringing catastrophe to… MORE

  In 2002, Vernon Smith and daniel kahneman were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. Smith received his prize “for having established laboratory experiments as a tool in empirical analysis, especially in the study of alternative market mechanisms.” The dominant view among economists as recently as the 1970s was that economists, unlike chemists or biologists,… MORE

  Thirty days have passed since my WSJ op/ed last month on the three winners of the Nobel Prize in economics. Therefore I can post the whole op/ed here. A Nobel Prize in Economics for the ‘Inclusive’ Free Market The three laureates’ research demonstrates the importance of property rights and the rule of law. By… MORE

Today, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University), Philippe Aghion (London School of Economics), and Peter Howitt (Brown University) “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”1  This follows a recent trend for the Committee to award to economics focused on economic growth, following Acemoglou, Johnson, and Robinson in 2024 and Kremer,… MORE

Svetozar “Steve” Pejovich, one of the most dynamic and insightful theorists writing on property rights, reflects on his experience in economics. With characteristic sagacity and humor, he demonstrates the power that empirical cases can bring to bear on theoretical problems. Born in Belgrade, Pejovich is Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, where he taught for… MORE

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

A professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago in the 1960s and a primary figure in Chicago School Economics and in the field of Law and Economics, Harold Demsetz has contributed original research on the theory of the firm, regulation in markets, industrial organization, antitrust policy, transaction costs, externalities, and… MORE

Eugene Fama shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Robert Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen. The three received the prize for “for their empirical analysis of stock prices.” Fama has played a key role in the development of modern finance, with major contributions to a broad range of topics within the field, beginning… MORE

  Robert Shiller received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing it with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen. The three received the prize “for their empirical analysis of stock prices.” Shiller argued that rational investors would price a stock at the present value of expected future dividends. However, he found (assuming that the… MORE

James Buchanan is the cofounder, along with Gordon Tullock, of public choice theory. Buchanan entered the University of Chicago’s graduate economics program as a “libertarian socialist.” After six weeks of taking Frank Knight’s course in price theory, recalls Buchanan, he had been converted into a zealous free marketer. Buchanan’s next big conversion came while reading… MORE