congestion pricing, federalism, trolling
Featured Article
“When you start thinking about the value of your time, you realize that some activities that seem cheap are actually expensive.” At the start of every class I teach, I give my students what I call “The Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom.” These pillars, I tell them, are the basis for a huge percent of .. MORE
Featured Article
“There are not two Smiths (the economist and the moral philosopher). There’s one. And the same holds for Marx. His efforts in Capital are best understood in light of his 1844 Manuscripts.“ About twenty years ago I purchased my three volumes of the definitive Charles Kerr edition of Karl Marx’s Capital from the Victor Kamkin .. MORE
Thinking Straight
After the Second World War, there was a very heavy movement of people. It was mainly from the East to the West in Europe, in part voluntary and in part compulsory, and it was toward host countries that were acting as new homes. This movement of well over 10 million people, which gradually came to .. MORE
Cost-benefit Analysis
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Energy, Environment, Resources
International Trade
International Trade
Revealed Preference
International Trade
Incentives
Economic and Political Philosophy
Monetary Policy
econtalk-podcast
What’s different about companies that accomplish amazing things? Perhaps surprisingly, says Andrew McAfee of MIT, it has nothing to do with being agile or with better technology. Instead, they’ve developed what he calls “geek” cultures, which emphasize intense cooperation, rapid learning curves, and a lack of hierarchy. Listen as McAfee talks about his book The .. MORE
econtalk-extra
In this episode, author and economist Arnold Kling returns to talk about his book, The Three Languages of Politics, which he originally spoke with host Russ Roberts about in this 2013 episode. Kling describes three “languages” and axes of opposition for progressives, conservatives, and libertarians in an effort to explain how we have begun to .. MORE
International Trade
When I was a full-time economics professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, I always taught my master’s students about comparative advantage. I showed them that if two people were on a desert island and discovered each other, they could each have more by specializing in producing the good in which they had a comparative .. MORE
International Trade
Many people who discuss who actually pays for tariffs claim that they are paid solely by consumers. Even many economists, including co-blogger Pierre Lemieux, say that. But it’s important to look at what people are implicitly assuming when they make that claim. Here’s what I wrote in “Tariffs Will Hurt Canadians and Americans Alike,” .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
THE fullest account we possess of the life of Adam Smith is still the memoir which Dugald Stewart read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on two evenings of the winter of 1793, and which he subsequently published as a separate work, with many additional illustrative notes, in 1810. Later biographers have made few, if .. MORE
In preparing this volume, I have attempted to write a descriptive essay on the past and present monetary systems of the world, the materials employed to make money, the regulations under which the coins are struck and issued, the natural laws which govern their circulation, the several modes in which they may be replaced by .. MORE
Henry Hazlitt’s 1946 book, Economics in One Lesson,1 remains relevant for readers to this day. In print since its publication, the book has sold more than a million copies, has been translated into 10 languages, and in 2019 became inspiration for a new book, Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well and Why .. MORE
[I]nstitutions should be formative… they should act as links between the personal and the social. What we need, then, is a recommitment to such an understanding of institutions. Our challenge is less to calm the forces that are pelting our society than to reinforce the structures that hold us together. That calls for a spirit .. MORE
VIDEO
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
VIDEO
Israel Kirzner, Professor Emeritus at NYU, is among the foremost scholars in the continuing development of the Austrian school of economic theory. He has extended our understanding of the workings of a free society, illuminated the role of entrepreneurs in the process of economic discovery, and shed new light on the dynamics of market forces. .. 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.
Gross output (GO) is a relatively new macroeconomic statistic that measures total economic activity. Gross domestic product (GDP)—the other major measure of economic activity—accounts only for final goods and services. However, GO’s scope includes both final output as well as intermediate inputs at all earlier stages of production. Therefore, GO is a much more comprehensive measure .. MORE
[An update of Occupational Licensing, by David S. Young.] Occupational licensing today directly affects more than one in five workers in the United States—up from one in 20 workers in the 1950s. This is nearly twice the fraction of workers belonging to a union and more than 15 times the fraction of workers receiving the .. MORE
The price of a share of stock, like that of any other financial asset, equals the present value of the sum of the expected dividends or other cash payments to the shareholders, where future payments are discounted by the interest rate and risks involved. Most of the cash payments to stockholders arise from dividends, which .. MORE
-Arthur Seldon
-Leonard E. Read Full Quote >>
-James M. Buchanan Full Quote >>