Trade 101 for Trumpies

To augment my four-part video series about trade (dealing with the WTO, creative destruction, deficits, and economics), here’s part of my recent lecture about Trump’s trade policy to the Universidad de Libertad in Mexico City For those who (mistakenly) want to skip the video, my speech focused on these five themes. Trade deficits don’t matter. […]

Trade 101 for Trumpies

Mocking European Statism

I have a special page for humor involving Europe, but I have not added to it since sharing some Brexit humor in 2016. Let’s being the process of catching up with some amusing cartoons and memes mocking our government-loving cousins on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve made the serious point that bureaucrats […]

Mocking European Statism

When politicians campaign on competition, be very worried

Targeting big existing businesses may be tempting to politicians, but ensuring market openness will do more good   Eric Crampton writes –  It’s fair to say that economists like competition. It’s also fair to say that when politicians start talking about competition, economists ought to get a little bit nervous.

When politicians campaign on competition, be very worried

Hayek on Decentralized Information in Markets

Friedrich von Hayek won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 1974. For the 50th anniversary of the prize, the IEA published a short collection of essays called Hayek’s Nobel: 50 Years On, edited by Kristian Niemietz. It Includes Hayek’s speech upon acceptance of the Nobel Prize, “The Pretence…

Hayek on Decentralized Information in Markets

Margaret Thatcher, Michael Curley, and the 19th Theorem of Government

In this 12-second video, Margaret Thatcher is talking about the Labour Party in the United Kingdom, but her warning has universal application. And when I say her warning has universal application, I’m not joking. Politicians generally can’t resist the temptation to buy votes. And I fear that this can and will happen at all levels […]

Margaret Thatcher, Michael Curley, and the 19th Theorem of Government

Economists Should Never Abandon Their Principles

TweetIn the Spring of 2023 I had the honor of delivering, at the Richmond Fed, the annual Sandridge Lecture to the Virginia Association of Economists. The text of that lecture – the title of which is “The Role of the Economic Scholar in Highly Politicized Society” – is available here. And pasted below are two…

Economists Should Never Abandon Their Principles

Mr. Haltiwanger and the Austrians

In November, I chided Austrian economists for neglecting the John Haltiwanger’s empirical work on creative destruction:Around 2000, I discovered that John Haltiwanger, a very mainstream economist, had a pile of empirical evidence vindicating the importance of Schumpeterian creative destruction. That pile is now a mountain. At the time, I tried to get Austrians to start…

Mr. Haltiwanger and the Austrians

Left-Wing Economists Were Wildly Wrong about Javier Milei and his Libertarian Agenda for Argentina

It’s easy to mock economists. Consider the supposedly prestigious left-leaning academics who asserted in 2021 that Biden’s agenda was not inflationary. At the risk of understatement, they wound up with egg on their faces.* Today, we’re going to look at another example of leftist economists making fools of themselves. It involves Argentina, where President Javier […]

Left-Wing Economists Were Wildly Wrong about Javier Milei and his Libertarian Agenda for Argentina

Marx explained

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/5xeXG5jK2eEyuxzv/?mibextid=xfxF2i

Why the @NZGreens are beside the point

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/FUj6ygLReGRsZQBD/?mibextid=qi2Omg

European Policies = European Stagnation

I’ve written many times about how Americans are much richer than Europeans. And I’ve also written many times that the U.S. economy has been growing faster (which shouldn’t happen according to convergence theory). There’s a simple reason for America’s superior performance. The U.S. is burdened by a medium-sized welfare state and a bad tax system […]

European Policies = European Stagnation

Quotation of the Day…

Tweet… is from page 422 of Robert Bork’s masterful 1978 book, The Antitrust Paradox: Competition in open markets reflects the ideal of equality of opportunity, while antitrust’s longstanding and growing concern for the small and less efficient reflects a preference for equality of outcome. Outcomes are not equal in open competition, hence the pressure for…

Quotation of the Day…

Marxist Economics Is Dumb

TweetHere’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal: Editor: You report that, in response to Google’s firing of 28 workers who protested that company’s affiliation with the Israeli government, a spokeswoman for the group that organized the protests said about the firings that “this flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values…

Marxist Economics Is Dumb

Claude 3 Opus does Austrian economics

TC: Let’s say you were Peter Boettke, and looking to pen a critique of Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurship. You come from a slightly different branch of the Austrian school. How would you use that differential background to express your differences with the Kirznerian theory, which emphasizes alertness above all else as an entrepreneurial characteristic? “If […]

Claude 3 Opus does Austrian economics

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

Tweet… is from page 434 of the final (2016) volume – Bourgeois Equality – of Deirdre McCloskey’s soaring trilogy on the essence of bourgeois values, on their transmission, and on their essential role in modern life: Zero-sum is the default in thinking about my gain and thine. It is the chief error in economic thinking…

Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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