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Scott Sumner recently had a post discussing a potential relationship between trade deficits and government debt. To sum up, since debt must come from savings, if domestic savings are too low relative to domestic investment, then foreign savings must come in and make up the difference; the United States imports foreign savings. When the government .. MORE
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Institutional Economics
When a politician declares that he is “ready to govern,” what does he mean by “govern”? The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the verb “to govern” came from a French word and first appeared in English in the 14th century. In its intransitive form, it meant “to direct or control the actions and affairs .. MORE
Energy, Environment, Resources
A recent article in the OC Register provides a good example of why some decisions should be made at the state level: Mission Viejo councilmembers axed plans for a new Department of Motor Vehicles location in the Kaleidoscope shopping mall over traffic and safety concerns. The DMV — which would have been the first for .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Scott Sumner recently had a post discussing a potential relationship between trade deficits and government debt. To sum up, since debt must come from savings, if domestic savings are too low relative to domestic investment, then foreign savings must come in and make up the difference; the United States imports foreign savings. When the government .. MORE
Money and Inflation
Should we call this reverse monetarism? An “answer” in the July 1 episode of Jeopardy was the following: In the 1940s, this country’s Magyar Nemzeti Bank printed the million billion pengo note to fight inflation. The contestants were expected to say, and one did, “What is Hungary?” The problem, of course, is that you don’t .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
The second round of the French election, to be held on July 7, carries some interesting lessons about democracy. In each circumscription where no candidate obtained more than 50% of the votes in the first round, those who got more than 12.5% are allowed to run in the second round. A political party or coalition .. MORE
Economic History
The historian AJP Taylor wrote that the 1923 general election was “the only election in British history, fought solely and specifically on Protection.” The general election of 1847 is one of the few contenders. The Reform Act of 1832 gave the vote to elements of the growing urban middle class. The Tory Party fought the .. MORE
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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 nameAustrian Economics
Here are some quick comments on Richard Ebeling’s and Geoffrey Lea’s second essays on Austrian economics in South Royalton, Vermont. All of the essays can be found here. First, Richard Ebeling. Richard tells a hilarious story about traveling to South Royalton, Vermont from Sacramento by bus. Wow! I remember that Harry Watson and I had .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Often when I advocate abolishing a particular regulation, I’m accused of thinking that my proposal is a panacea. Usually, that’s false: I point out that it would move things in the right direction but that it’s not close to being a panacea. I’m guessing that for most policies he advocates, Bryan Caplan has the .. MORE
Cross-country Comparisons
The upcoming legislative election in France (on June 30 and, for the second round, July 7) tells us much about politics. It also suggests some comparisons between American and French politics. The parties of the left vying for a majority in the National Assembly have built a populist coalition, the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front .. MORE
A Liberty Classics Book Review of Universal Economics, by Armen Alchian and William Allen.1 What do you do when economists stop believing in economics? The “dismal science” never merited its dreary epithet, but trends in economics education at the graduate and undergraduate levels could change that. Ph.D. courses are saturated with hyper-mathematical models that are .. MORE
The role of rationally articulated ideas may be quite modest in its effect on a given election, a legislative vote, or an action of a head of state. Yet the atmosphere in which such decisions take place may be dominated by a particular vision—or by a particular conflict of visions. Where intellectuals have played a .. MORE
This book is about how the world’s religions have gained such power, what they do with it, and how abuses of this power can be constrained. —Paul Seabright, The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People,1 p. 6 Paul Seabright’s The Divine Economy investigates how religions gain adherents and acquire wealth and .. MORE
[t]he idea of decline consists of two distinct traditions. For every Western intellectual who dreads the collapse of his own society (like Henry Adams or Arnold Toynbee or Paul Kennedy or Charles Murray), there is another who has looked forward to the event with glee. —Arthur Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History1 In .. MORE
"When seen as a form of production, we can say that activism seeks to ensure or improve the production of public goods....When engaged in as a form of consumption, the wider results of activism are..
BC, July 5