Featured Post
Related Post
I mentioned in a previous post that The Economist appears to lose all rationality when one specific topic is broached. The writer of the magazine’s April 20 newsletter “The World in Brief” gave another illustration in the section “The Day Ahead”: he could not mention the 25th anniversary of the horrible Columbine school massacre without doing .. MORE
Featured Comment
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Warning: There will be spoilers in this post for the plot of Dune, including plot points from the second book that will serve as the basis for the as-yet unmade third movie. The recently released Dune: Part 2 has been a big box-office success, as was the first movie. These two movies were based on .. MORE
Political Economy
Perhaps as a sequel of mankind’s long tribal history, people apparently need scapegoats to shed the weight of sins and responsibilities from their shoulders. In democratic countries, “unelected officials” figure among the favorite scapegoats. It is an easy path to follow under the sun of simple beliefs, and I confess I once found it tempting. .. MORE
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
In mid-October 2023, I wrote a draft of a blog post that I didn’t end up posting. I’m running it below, word for word as I wrote it in October. In October, I ran it by a friend who is very pro-immigration and, even though he largely agreed with it, he thought my proposal wouldn’t .. MORE
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
America is an outlier. Its GDP per capita is far higher than any other country with at least 10 million people. The US GDP per capita (PPP adjusted) is $85,373, while the next nine range from Taiwan at $77,858 to the UK at $58,880. (All of these are IMF estimates for 2024.) If you prefer .. MORE
Economics of Crime
Every public policy comes with its own set of externalities and unintended consequences. Moreover, because politics exists at the nexus between competing interests, outcomes can often approach zero-sum, whether or not this was the initial aim of policymakers. Simply put, someone gains while someone loses; there is always a cost. In my previous post, we .. MORE
Free Markets
Who do tariffs punish? Many people think they punish unscrupulous, shifty foreign manufacturers who aren’t playing fair and “dumping” their shoddy wares on American markets at prices below American producers’ costs, but that’s not true. Tariffs are sanctions and penalties imposed on American consumers for not paying enough. Governments regularly impose sanctions on other governments .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
Bloggers David Henderson, Alberto Mingardi, Scott Sumner, Pierre Lemieux, Kevin Corcoran, and guests write on topical economics of interest to them, illuminating subjects from politics and finance, to recent films and cultural observations, to history and literature.
Browse our archive of posts by author last nameBooks: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Years ago, I read Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty by Muhammad Yunus. In the book, Yunus describes the origins and purpose of the Grameen Bank. This bank specializes in offering small loans to people in poverty to help them begin to attain self-sufficiency. This isn’t a charitable organization – .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Public Goods differ from private goods in that they are non-rivalrous in consumption and nonexcludable. If I watch a fireworks show, it doesn’t reduce the amount of “fireworks show” my neighbor can enjoy. If I’m going to put on a fireworks show, I can’t prevent non-payers from watching my bombs bursting in air. Since public .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Political and moral philosophy are related to economics, and even less stealthily to the older political economy. The economist cannot recommend a government policy without making or accepting a value judgment consistent with who is going to be helped and who will be harmed. At least, he must believe that the policy falls within the .. MORE
Ludwig von Mises The works of Ludwig von Mises and James M. Buchanan reflect the best of the classical liberal intellectual tradition. Given the centenary of the publication of Mises’ Socialism,1 and since 2023 marked the tenth anniversary of the passing of Buchanan, it seems an excellent time to remember their contributions. Both defend methodological .. MORE
Questions are not scarce in economics, and the title of this book poses a whopper: “Are Economists Basically Immoral?”1 Spoiler alert, the answer is “no”. However, it is easy to see how economists get a bad rap when the public thinks economics is all about greed and maximizing profit. A book that uses this question .. MORE
Book Review of Living for Pleasure: An Epicurean Guide to Life, by Emily A. Austin.1 The name Epicurus is often associated with indulgent hedonism. This stereotypical mischaracterization, which has found its way into pop culture and even into supermarket names, suggests a life of excess is the route to happiness. However, a new book by .. MORE
The story of how I became an economist is its own odyssey: I started college as an English major, intending to hone my creative writing skills, and hopefully to drop out after I wrote the first book of an extremely long, best-selling fantasy epic. The winds of fate blew in other directions and I found .. MORE
I do not see any contradiction in thinking that all the value of a firm is created by the workers, that all "surplus" should go to workers, profits of owners ought to be zero [I..
Thomas L Hutcheson, May 1