Book Review, Kling's Corner
One main reason why rational expectations macroeconomics, in particular its implication that the Phillips Curve for anticipated changes in money is vertical even in the short run, caught on was the allegation that the incumbent Keynesian tradition had failed to either control or explain high inflation. “Failed to control,” I suppose, is true, though the .. MORE
Liberty Classics
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, Kling's Corner
Many of the books I’ve relied on most heavily were published within the last decade or so. These include Blueprint (2019), The Goodness Paradox (2019), Social (2013), The Ape That Understood the Universe (2018), The Folly of Fools (2011), Everybody Lies (2017), Why Everybody Else Is a Hypocrite (2010), The Elephant in the Brain (2017), .. MORE
Macroeconomics
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
Fiscal Policy
Cost-benefit Analysis
Free Markets
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
Public Choice Theory
Foreign Policy
Labor Market
Economic Growth
econtalk-podcast
Journalist and author Sebastian Junger talks about his book, Freedom, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. The book and conversation are based on a 400-mile walk Junger took with buddies along railroad rights-of-way, evading police, railroad security, and other wanderers. Junger discusses the ever-present tension between the human desire to be free and the desire to .. MORE
econtalk-podcast
There’s often a gap between the textbook treatment of statistics and the cookbook treatment–how to cook up the numbers when you’re in the kitchen of the real world. Jeremy Weber of the University of Pittsburgh and the author of Statistics for Public Policy hopes his book can close that gap. He talks to EconTalk host .. MORE
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
There are a wide range of arguments for what makes a state legitimate, or what confers authority on a state in such a way as to create a duty to obey. There is one class of argument I’ve always found unsatisfying, and recently while pondering it I realized why it always seemed to fall short .. MORE
Foreign Policy
You might think this article comes a little late since it’s being published after Memorial Day. But now that Memorial Day has come and gone, it’s worth thinking about what it represents and why the debate about Memorial Day is so crucial. “Debate,” you might say. “What debate?” Yes, there is a debate. On .. MORE
Explore the lasting legacies and
continued relevance of our classic titles.
This 1908 edition is the third reprinting of Clark’s path-breaking, yet widely under-read, 1899 textbook, in which he developed marginal productivity theory and used it to explore the way income is distributed between wages, interest, and rents in a market economy. In this book Clark made the theory of marginal productivity clear enough that we .. MORE
One of Econlib’s aims is to put online the most significant works in the history of economic thought, and there can be no doubting the significance of Marx’s influence on both economic theory in the late 19th century and on the creation of Marxist states in the 20th century. From the time of the emergence .. MORE
A review of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the American Story by Wilfred McClay.1 American history isn’t what it used to be. Once it was common for a history textbook author to tell a good story. I remember as an eighth-grade student being horrified that my teacher was going to toss out a bunch .. MORE
A Book Review of Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made, by Vaclav Smil.1 Over the last two decades, Vaclav Smil has produced a series of outstanding scholarly works across a range of interconnected topics. The core interest in all cases is energy—its sources and uses—but this is embedded in a wider concern with .. 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
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
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.
What Are Bubbles? In 1996, the fledgling Internet portal Yahoo.com made its stock-market debut. This was during a time of great excitement—as well as uncertainty—about the prosperous “new economy” that the rapidly expanding Internet promised. By the beginning of the year 2000, Yahoo shares were trading at $240 each.1 Exactly one year later, however, Yahoo’s .. MORE
Why are some countries rich and others poor? Why do some countries experience sustained levels of high growth that propel them into the ranks of the rich while others stagnate, seemingly in perpetuity? These are perhaps the most fascinating and important questions in all of economics. Since the late 1980s, economists have done extensive work .. MORE
Government debt is the stock of outstanding IOUs issued by the government at any time in the past and not yet repaid. Governments issue debt whenever they borrow from the public; the magnitude of the outstanding debt equals the cumulative amount of net borrowing that the government has done. The deficit is the addition in .. MORE
-Adam Smith
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