News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Life
Culture & Art
Hobbies
News
Entertainment
Science & Technology
Culture & Art
Hobbies
On Fair Prices - Econlib
Discussions on what constitutes a “fair” (or just) price are quite old. Classical market liberals will typically classify a fair price as any price that is voluntarily agreed upon by the parties in an exchange. That’s all well and good, but I wonder how useful the concept of “fair price” is. First, a bit of […]
Twenty Years of Freakonomics (with Stephen Dubner) - Econlib
Quantitative, contrarian, and nuanced: these are the hallmarks of the Freakonomics approach. Hear journalist and podcaster Stephen Dubner speak with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the 20th anniversary of the popular-economics book Dubner co-authored with Steven Levitt. They discuss how the book came to be, how the journey changed Dubner’s life, and how it changed his […]
Straight Whiskey and Dirty Politics - Econlib
In the early 20th century, America was buzzing with Progressive Era reforms aimed at taming the excesses of industrialization. One landmark was the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, hailed as a victory for consumer safety. It banned poisonous ingredients in food and drink, required accurate labeling, and cracked down on imitations. But when […]
Let Them Eat Steak: Cutsinger's Solution - Econlib
Question: Russ buys 5 sirloins per week. True or false: If the price of sirloin rises by $5 apiece, and if Russ’ preferences and income remain constant, he will have $25 a week less to spend on other things. Solution: One of the first things I emphasize in my micro principles course is that the […]
Free Trade and Dynamic Efficiency - Econlib
…for the economy to function well, you don’t just need good property rights, you also need what we could call, somewhat vaguely, “economic freedoms.” You need labor mobility; you need to get rid of guilds; you need to get rid of monopolies, both local and global; you need to get rid of all kinds of […]
An Intuition Test - Econlib
The conclusions we reach about the world are, to a large extent, influenced by our underlying intuitions. Various writers have discussed how our immediate sense of how the world works has a huge influence on how our worldviews develop. Thomas Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions posits that there are fundamentally different “visions” about the world […]
2025 Nobel: Growth Through Technology and Culture - Econlib
Today, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University), Philippe Aghion (London School of Economics), and Peter Howitt (Brown University) “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth.”1 This follows a recent trend for the Committee to award to economics focused on economic growth, following Acemoglou, Johnson, and Robinson in 2024 and Kremer, […]
The Magic of Tokyo (with Joe McReynolds) - Econlib
What drives the seeming relentless dynamism of Tokyo? Is there something special about Japanese culture? Joe McReynolds, co-author of Emergent Tokyo, argues that the secret to Tokyo’s energy and attractiveness as a place to live and visit comes from policies that allow Tokyo to emerge from the bottom up. Post-war black markets evolved into today’s yokocho–dense […]
When Godzilla Breaks Windows - Econlib
It’s morning in Tokyo. You’re sitting on your balcony with a cup of coffee or tea, enjoying the rising sun over the bay. Birds chirp. All is peaceful—until that peace is shattered by a giant radioactive kaiju named Godzilla. You watch in horror as the massive, irradiated monster makes landfall and begins his rampage through […]
Is The Housing Affordability Crisis an Illusion? - Econlib
Average home prices remain very close to the all-time highs reached at the beginning of the year. Accordingly, public opinion surveys show rising concern about the issue of housing affordability, and politicians are taking notice. The Trump administration has waded in with a potentially forthcoming national housing emergency declaration so the President can do… something. We […]
Understanding Theory: Labor Market Edition - Econlib
Recently, the Trump Administration announced that H-1B applications would face a new $100,000 fee (in addition to the already existing fees, not to mention legal fees). The H-1B visa allows firms to hire foreign individuals with a college degree for their positions. Firms enter a lottery, and if they win the lottery, they can hire […]
Digital ID in the Cradle of Liberty (My Last EconLog Post) - Econlib
On September 26, the British prime minister’s office announced that “A new digital ID scheme will help combat illegal working while making it easier for the vast majority of people to use vital government services. Digital ID will be mandatory for Right to Work checks.” I was getting ready to offer an argument against government […]
The Rational Bull Elk - Econlib
I watch a lot of nature documentaries. I’m not very choosy about the animals covered, whether whales, moles, lions, ants, chameleons, blowfish, or mosquitoes. I’m even fascinated by footage of bacteria under a microscope. I’m usually immersed as I sit in front of my large-screen television, so long as I learn something about the intricacies […]
The Invisible Hierarchies that Rule Our World (with Toby Stuart) - Econlib
Status isn’t fixed; it’s transferred and “bestowed,” shaping who gets resources, attention, and opportunity. So argues author Toby Stuart of UC Berkeley in his book, Anointed. He and EconTalk’s Russ Roberts explore why hierarchies persist–reducing conflict, allocating scarce resources, and curating our overwhelming choices–and how endorsements, blurbs, and brands quietly steer our judgments, from bookstores […]
What China Knows - Econlib
Process knowledge is hard to measure because it exists mostly in people’s heads and the pattern of their relationships to other technical workers. We tend to refer to these intangibles as know-how, institutional memory, or tacit knowledge. They are embodied by an experienced workforce like Shenzhen’s. There, someone might work at an iPhone plant one […]
The Missing Rules - Econlib
On my (endlessly expanding) “to-read” list is Nicholas Wade’s book The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations. The book seems like it can offer insight into a question I’ve been curious about for a while: What separates rules or systems that run “against human nature” in a way that is […]
Letting Markets Work: Urban Planning - Econlib
For some reason, urban planning has become a hot topic on social media. Even more strangely, it has become ideologized. In the name of the community, left-wingers are generally for state-run public transportation and government housing. In the name of families or individuals, many right-wingers want more suburbs and, particularly, taxpayer-funded highways to accommodate cars. […]
Good News on Income - Econlib
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released updated figures on household and individual income. The news is quite positive: Real median household income in 2024 was a record $83,730, reversing a downward trend that began in 2020 with the pandemic. Real median individual income also reached a new high at $45,140 in 2024.[1] Both of these […]
What Is A Value Added Tax? - Econlib
At least once on this blog, I promised my readers that I would explain what a value added tax is and why it is not a trade barrier. However, I realized that it is not obvious how to explain all that in a blog post, and I decided to do an article for Regulation instead. […]
Eating with Intelligence (with Julia Belluz) - Econlib
Losing weight should be simple: eat less, exercise more. But according to author and health journalist Julia Belluz, it’s complicated. Listen as Belluz talks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about her new book, Food Intelligence. Belluz argues that a calorie is pretty much a calorie whether it’s carbs or fat. Keeping calories under control is often […]
Evaluating We Have Never Been Woke, Part 3: Economics - Econlib
In his book We Have Never Been Woke, Musa al-Gharbi examines the worldview of symbolic capitalists in great detail. Much of what he describes looks very familiar to me (although the fact that I see the behavior al-Gharbi describes so regularly is itself something I consider as having very little weight as evidence — I’ll […]
Ideas Have Consequences: Law & Economics Edition - Econlib
A new paper by Elliot Ash (ETH Zurich), Daniel L Chen (Toulouse School of Economics), and Suresh Naidu (Columbia University) in the Quarterly Journal of Economics discusses the impact of the Manne Economics Institute for Federal Judges on judicial rulings (“Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice“). From their abstract: […]
Preferences Informed by Information - Econlib
During the late 1990s a scientific paper investigating the link between the MMR vaccine and Autism was published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Mayhem followed. Anti-vaccine attitudes increased, along with the presence of Measles. However, the paper’s finding were fabricated. Although the paper was later retracted by The Lancet, Pandora’s Box had been […]
EconLog Price Theory: Let Them Eat Steak - Econlib
We’re bringing back price theory with our series on Price Theory problems with Professor Bryan Cutsinger. You can see all of Cutsinger’s problems and solutions by subscribing to his EconLog RSS feed. Share your proposed solutions in the Comments. Professor Cutsinger will be present in the comments for the next couple of weeks, and we’ll post his […]
In (Sort of) Defense of (Something Like) Property Taxes - Econlib
A revolt is building across the United States against property taxes. From Florida to North Dakota, states have attempted or are attempting to abolish them. The anger driving this movement comes from two sources. One is the belief that you are being taxed for living in your house. “Is the property yours or are you […]
The Liberal 19th Century - Econlib
Many libertarians and classical liberals consider the 19th century in the West as the most liberal epoch in history. We can certainly see stains, notably slavery and later Jim Crow, as well as colonialism (think about the control of trade from the colonies, which Adam Smith criticized in his 1776 Wealth of Nations). In many […]
The Social Benefits of Iconoclasts - Econlib
Years ago, my father offered me some advice. (Many such instances, but I have a specific case in mind.) When in class, he told me, never be afraid to raise your hand and ask questions or seek clarification on some point you don’t understand. People are often reluctant to do this, he said, because they’re […]
Steven Pinker on Common Knowledge - Econlib
Why are Super Bowl ads so good for launching certain kinds of new products? Why do we all drive on the same side of the road? And why, despite laughing and crying together, do we often misread what others think? According to bestselling author and Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, it all comes down to common knowledge, or the phenomenon that happens when everyone knows that everyone else knows […]
Evaluating We Have Never Been Woke Part 2: Bootleggers and Baptists - Econlib
After spending ten posts (beginning here) outlining Musa al-Gharbi’s arguments in his book We Have Never Been Woke, it’s time to move on to my evaluation of those arguments. In my first post discussing this, I covered al-Gharbi’s claim that elite overproduction is an important cause of “Awokenings.” Today I want to explore how thinking […]
AI Won’t Kill Work – It Will Reinvent It - Econlib
It’s easy to doomscroll these days. AI, it appears, is coming for our jobs. Even occupations that were previously considered an easy path to a middle-class lifestyle, like lawyer and radiologist, may be subject to the AI chopping block. Yet these stories, despite their flashy headlines, are missing nuance. They examine the seen (and likely) […]
The Virtue of Dissent and Conversation - Econlib
I have written a lot on dissent and how it serves in the truth-finding process (for selections, see my blog posts here and here, and some of my academic articles like the award-winning “Cascading Expert Failure” and “Expert Failure and Pandemics: On Adapting to Life with Pandemics,” coauthored with Abigail Devereaux of Wichita State University, […]
Changing Opinions on America - Econlib
I have a memory of reading, sometime in the 1980s, a story in a French magazine about the American border patrol along the Mexican border. They don’t use police dogs, the reporter explained approvingly, “because of a certain idea of the rights of man.” I have tried to trace this story, but alas, to no […]
The Problem with Government-Run Grocery Stores - Econlib
In 1989, Russian President Boris Yeltsin took a famous trip to a grocery store in Texas. The event lives on in popular history because of this famous photograph. Yeltsin was amazed by the food availability in the US, in contrast with the breadlines of the Soviet Union. Markets successfully catered to customers, whereas government central […]
Preference Falsification, Marginal Cost, and Cancel Culture - Econlib
In my earlier post on preference falsification, I argued that a culture of free speech and open debate is a necessary factor for the benefits of free speech to be fully realized. This post expands on that, examining a common fable involving preference falsification, how the dynamics of preference falsification are different in reality than […]
The Anthropic Settlement: A $1.5 Billion Precedent for AI and Copyright - Econlib
Last week, Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude chatbot, settled a landmark class-action lawsuit for $1.5 billion. The amount is very large in the context of copyright legal cases, yet it represents just a fraction of Anthropic’s estimated $183 billion valuation. Authors and publishers, led by figures like Andrea Bartz and Charles Graeber, accused […]
The Measurement is Not the Thing - Econlib
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. -Galileo Galilei Any science contends with a difficult problem: there are things we want to understand, but we cannot easily measure those things. Any tool for measurement will inherently have technical limitations (that is, limited by the technology of the time) and be subject […]
How Did America Build the Arsenal of Democracy? (with Brian Potter) - Econlib
American manufacturing of aircraft during WWII dwarfed that of its enemies. By the end of the war, an American assembly line was producing a B-24 bomber in less than an hour. But that success was far from inevitable. Structural engineer and writer Brian Potter speaks with EconTalk’s Russ Roberts about the logistical challenges of ramping up […]
Bicycles Before Business - Econlib
El Camino Real (ECR), State Highway 82, the main thoroughfare connecting San Jose with San Francisco, is sandwiched between Federal Highways 280 and 101. Maintenance and Rehabilitation is largely paid by the state with modest local government participation. Indeed, Caltrans can repave and redesign ECR even without city approval. In 2024, Caltrans decided to repave […]
Evaluating We Have Never Been Woke, Part 1: Elite Overproduction - Econlib
After spending ten posts (beginning here) outlining Musa al-Gharbi’s arguments in his book We Have Never Been Woke, it’s time to move on to my evaluation of those arguments. In this post, I’ll begin to cover some of my thoughts on al-Gharbi’s more big-picture ideas — the cause of “Awokenings,” and the motivation for “woke” […]
Incentives Matter, Math History Edition - Econlib
Economists are fond of talking about how people respond to incentives — and stress how social arrangements can produce suboptimal results when they give people counterproductive incentives. I recently saw a fun video on the history of how mathematicians developed the imaginary number system (hey, I think it’s fun anyway!) that shows an example of this […]