Businesses complain about regulation incessantly, but many citizens, consumer advocates, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) think it absolutely necessary to protect the public interest. What is regulation? Why do we have it? How has it changed? This article briefly provides some answers, concentrating on experience with regulation in the United States. Regulation consists of requirements the […]
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.
When you buy a good or service, you rarely have perfect knowledge of its quality and safety. You are justifiably concerned about getting “ripped off.” Thus the need for consumer protection. Economic activity flourishes when consumers can trust producers, but the consumer must have grounds for trust. Consumers value, then, not only quality and safety, […]
“ Capitalism,” a term of disparagement coined by socialists in the mid-nineteenth century, is a misnomer for “economic individualism,” which Adam Smith earlier called “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty” (Wealth of Nations). Economic individualism’s basic premise is that the pursuit of self-interest and the right to own private property are morally defensible […]
Economic competition takes place in markets—meeting grounds of intending suppliers and buyers.1 Typically, a few sellers compete to attract favorable offers from prospective buyers. Similarly, intending buyers compete to obtain good offers from suppliers. When a contract is concluded, the buyer and seller exchange property rights in a good, service, or asset. Everyone interacts voluntarily, […]
Saving means different things to different people. To some, it means putting money in the bank. To others, it means buying stocks or contributing to a pension plan. But to economists, saving means only one thing—consuming less out of a given amount of resources in the present in order to consume more in the future. […]
In macroeconomics, sometimes defined as the theory of the economy as a whole, issues covered include economic growth, fiscal policy, monetary policy, investment, national income accounts, the gold standard, and unemployment.
The entries are on various aspects of of the labor market and include discrimination, the gender gap, immigration, job safety, and wages and working conditions.
This category ranges widely over various government policies, but mainly covers economy-wide policies on taxes, government spending, government debt and deficits, redistribution, welfare, and monetary policy.
This category deals with various issues in law and economics such as antitrust, liability, and intellectual property.
Swedish economist Bertil Ohlin received the Nobel Prize in 1977, along with James Meade, for his “pathbreaking contribution to the theory of international trade and international capital movements.” Ohlin’s prize was based on his book Interregional and International Trade, published in 1933. With a 1919 article by his former teacher Eli Heckscher as his […]
With The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith installed himself as the leading expositor of economic thought. Currents of Adam Smith run through the works published by David Ricardo and Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, and by John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman in the twentieth. Adam Smith was born in a small village […]