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Is China Winning? Rethinking Perceptions of Success in Central Planning

The contrast often presented between America and China is one where Beijing is a highly competent, well-oiled autocracy while the United States is a political circus held back by partisan drama. On the surface, and especially with recent news headlines, this may seem true. One might recall Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell staring blankly into .. MORE

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California Dreaming: The Effects of California’s “Fast Food” Minimum Wage

On April 1 of this year, California fast-food restaurant chains with sixty or more national locations (for example, McDonalds and Chipotle, but not Bill’s Burgers or Dick Church’s Diner or other off-brand restaurants in the state without national locations) were required to raise their minimum wage for all workers from $16 to $20 per hour, .. MORE

Book Review, Liberty Classics

Using Reason to Understand the Abuse and Decline of Reason

A Liberty Classics Book Review of Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason: Text and Documents, by F.A. Hayek (edited by Bruce Caldwell). 1 According to F.A. Hayek, what are the theoretical and historical reasons for the tragedies of socialism that emerged in the 20th century? Hayek attempted to answer this question in what .. MORE

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Macroeconomics

Was High Inflation Inevitable?

By Scott Sumner

Book Review

Mir McLuhanism

By Arnold Kling

Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

My Weekly Reading and Viewing for May 5, 2024

By David Henderson

Regulation

Imagine There’s No Zoning

By Scott Sumner

Media Watch

Keeping a Safe Distance From Policymakers

By Pierre Lemieux

EconTalk

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econtalk-podcast

The Top EconTalk Conversations of 2023 (with Russ Roberts)

Russ Roberts, EconTalk Host The favorite EconTalk episodes for host Russ Roberts are when he and his guest have an unusually powerful connection such as his recent episode with Charles Duhigg, and the ones where he learns something mind-blowing, like Adam Mastroianni’s insight that you can’t reach the brain through the ears. Listen as Russ .. MORE

econtalk-podcast

Adam Mastroianni on Peer Review and the Academic Kitchen

Psychologist Adam Mastroianni says peer review has failed. Papers with major errors make it through the process. The ones without errors often fail to replicate. One approach to improve the process is better incentives. But Mastroianni argues that peer review isn’t fixable. It’s a failed experiment. Listen as he makes the case to EconTalk host Russ Roberts for .. MORE

EconLog

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Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings

My Weekly Reading and Viewing for May 5, 2024

First, Happy Cinco de Mayo. Now to the content. Backpage: A Blueprint for Squelching Speech by Elizabeth Nolan Brown, Reason, April 29, 2024. Excerpt: From the beginning, this prosecution has been premised on a bogus rationale (authorities yammer on about sex trafficking though none of the defendants are charged with sex trafficking), overreaching in its scope (attempting .. MORE

Regulation

Imagine There’s No Zoning

For many people, a world without zoning sounds like a dystopia.  Uninformed people often assume that zoning laws protect homeowners from the risk of ugly industrial plants being built right next door. In fact, there were rules against that sort of “public nuisance” even before the first zoning laws were enacted. The actual purpose of .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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continued relevance of our classic titles.

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The Purchasing Power of Money

By Irving Fisher

THE purpose of this book is to set forth the principles determining the purchasing power of money and to apply those principles to the study of historical changes in that purchasing power, including in particular the recent change in “the cost of living,” which has aroused world-wide discussion.If the principles here advocated are correct, the .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

Does Economics Need More than One Lesson?

By Michael D. Thomas

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

Love and Economics

By Liya Palagashvili

A Book Review of Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating, by Paul Oyer.1   Match.com, eHarmony, and OkCupid, it turns out, are no different from eBay or Monster.com. On all these sites, people come together trying to find matches. —Paul Oyer, Everything I Ever Needed to Know About .. MORE

Conversations

VIDEO

A Conversation with James M. Buchanan, Parts I and II

Nobel laureate James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Universally respected as one of the founders of the economics of public choice, he is the author of numerous books and hundreds of articles in the areas of public finance, public choice, constitutional economics, and economic .. MORE

VIDEO

A Conversation with Israel Kirzner

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

Intellectual Portrait Series

Conversations with some of the most original thinkers of our time

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Guides

College Economics Topics

Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.

Economist Biographies

From the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Labor

Wages and Working Conditions

CEOs of multinational corporations, exotic dancers, and children with lemonade stands have at least one thing in common. They all expect a return for their effort. Most workers get that return in a subtle and ever-changing combination of money wages and working conditions. This article describes how they changed for the typical U.S. worker during .. MORE

Schools of Economic Thought

Experimental Economics

When the Swedish Nobel Committee awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences to Vernon L. Smith, an economist at George Mason University, it simply affirmed what economists have long known: that experimental economics has arrived as a respected and powerful discipline within economics. The committee noted that the award was based on Smith’s .. MORE

Economic Regulation, The Marketplace

Brand Names

Consumers pay a higher price for brand-name products than for products that do not carry an established brand name. Because this involves paying extra for what some consider an identical product that merely has been advertised and promoted, brand names may appear to be economically wasteful. This argument was behind the decision to eliminate all .. MORE

Quotes

Without theory, one can never understand the general underlying mechanisms that operate in different situations. If not harnessed to solving empirical puzzles, theoretical work can spin off under its own momentum, reflecting little of the empirical world.

-Elinor Ostrom

Man’s behavior in the market relationship, reflecting the propensity to truck and to barter, and the manifold variations in structure that this relationship can take; these are the proper subjects for the economist’s study.

-James M. Buchanan Full Quote >>

The concept of capitalism is as an economic concept immutable; if it means anything, it means the market economy. One deprives oneself of the semantic tools to deal adequately with the problems of contemporary history and economic policies if one acquiesces in a different terminology.    

-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>