More than a century after his death, Karl Marx remains one of the most controversial figures in the Western world. His relentless criticism of capitalism and his corresponding promise of an inevitable, harmonious socialist future inspired a revolution of global proportions. It seemed that—with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the spread of communism throughout […]| Econlib
The United States and all other modern industrial economies experience significant swings in economic activity. In some years, most industries are booming and unemployment is low; in other years, most industries are operating well below capacity and unemployment is high. Periods of economic prosperity are typically called expansions or booms; periods of economic decline are […]| Econlib
The Austrian school of economics was founded in 1871 with the publication of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics. menger, along with william stanley jevons and leon walras, developed the marginalist revolution in economic analysis. Menger dedicated Principles of Economics to his German colleague William Roscher, the leading figure in the German historical school, which dominated economic […]| Econlib
Although labor unions have been celebrated in folk songs and stories as fearless champions of the downtrodden working man, this is not how economists see them. Economists who study unions—including some who are avowedly prounion—analyze them as cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor to various firms and industries. […]| Econlib
The foreign exchange market is the market in which foreign currency—such as the yen or euro or pound—is traded for domestic currency—for example, the U.S. dollar. This “market” is not in a centralized location; instead, it is a decentralized network that is nevertheless highly integrated via modern information and telecommunications technology. According to a triennial […]| Econlib
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 […]| Econlib
How do economists measure income inequality, and how has it changed over time? This entry explores these questions and the cause of income inequality,| Econlib
In 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been […]| Econlib
Many people believe that only government intervention prevents rampant discrimination in the private sector. Economic theory predicts the opposite: market mechanisms impose inescapable penalties on profits whenever for-profit enterprises discriminate against individuals on any basis other than productivity. Though bigoted managers may hold sway for a time, in the long run the profit penalty makes […]| Econlib
The fact that trade protection hurts the economy of the country that imposes it is one of the oldest but still most startling insights economics has to offer. The idea dates back to the origin of economic science itself. Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, which gave birth to economics, already contained the argument for […]| Econlib
Intellectual property is normally defined as the set of products protected under laws associated with copyright, patent, trademark, industrial design, and trade secrets. The U.S. Constitution expressly allows for intellectual property protection, albeit for a limited time, in the form of protection of “writings and discoveries” in order to promote “science and useful arts.” This […]| Econlib
K-12 In the 1980s, economists puzzled by a decline in the growth of U.S. productivity realized that American schools had taken a dramatic turn for the worse. After rising every year for fifty years, student scores on a variety of achievement tests dropped sharply in 1967. They continued to decline through 1980. The decline was […]| Econlib
Milton Friedman was the twentieth century’s most prominent advocate of free markets. Born in 1912 to Jewish immigrants in New York City, he attended Rutgers University, where he earned his B.A. at the age of twenty. He went on to earn his M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1933 and his Ph.D. from […]| Econlib
New Keynesian economics is the school of thought in modern macroeconomics that evolved from the ideas of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in the 1930s, and his influence among academics and policymakers increased through the 1960s. In the 1970s, however, new classical economists such as Robert Lucas, […]| Econlib
Alfred Marshall was the dominant figure in British economics (itself dominant in world economics) from about 1890 until his death in 1924. His specialty was microeconomics—the study of individual markets and industries, as opposed to the study of the whole economy. In his most important book, Principles of Economics, Marshall emphasized that the price […]| Econlib
The price of a share of stock, like that of any other financial asset, equals the present value of the sum of the expected dividends or other cash payments to the shareholders, where future payments are discounted by the interest rate and risks involved. Most of the cash payments to stockholders arise from dividends, which […]| Econlib
The Birth of the “Blues” In the 1930s and 1940s, a competitive market for health insurance developed in many places in the United States. Typically, premiums tended to reflect risks, and insurers aggressively monitored claims to keep costs down and prevent abuses. Following World War II, however, the market changed radically. Hospitals had created Blue […]| Econlib
Is Health Care Different? Health care is different from other goods and services: the health care product is ill-defined, the outcome of care is uncertain, large segments of the industry are dominated by nonprofit providers, and payments are made by third parties such as the government and private insurers. Many of these factors are present […]| Econlib
Few economic indicators are of more concern to Americans than unemployment statistics. Reports that unemployment rates are dropping make us happy; reports to the contrary make us anxious. But just what do unemployment figures tell us? Are they reliable measures? What influences joblessness? How Is Unemployment Defined and Measured? Each month, the federal government’s Bureau […]| Econlib
Telecommunications matters economically for two reasons. First, it plays a role perhaps second only to brain power in the operation and rapidly expanding productivity of the modern “information-based” economy; indeed, it supplies a primary technical means for productively harnessing the information and knowledge spread among individual economic actors throughout the global economic order. Second, the […]| Econlib
Until the so-called Keynesian revolution of the late 1930s and 1940s, the two main parts of economic theory were typically labeled “monetary theory” and “price theory.” Today, the corresponding dichotomy is between “macroeconomics” and “microeconomics.” The motivating force for the change came from the macro side, with modern macroeconomics being far more explicit than old-fashioned […]| Econlib
Modern economists excel at identifying theoretical reasons why markets might fail. While these theories may temper uncritical views of the market, it is important to note that markets do, in fact, work incredibly well. Indeed, markets work so thoroughly and quietly that their success too often goes unnoticed. Consider that the number of different ways […]| Econlib
Most of the energy consumed in America today is produced from the combustion of fossil fuels, primarily oil, coal, and natural gas. Energy can be generated, however, in any number of ways. Figure 1 indicates the sources of energy employed by the American economy as of February 2004. Figure 1 U.S. Energy Sources, 2004 The economy […]| Econlib
Socialism—defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production—was the tragic failure of the twentieth century. Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty. Yet the idea and the ideal of socialism […]| Econlib
One of the most fundamental requirements of a capitalist economic system—and one of the most misunderstood concepts—is a strong system of property rights. For decades social critics in the United States and throughout the Western world have complained that “property” rights too often take precedence over “human” rights, with the result that people are treated […]| Econlib
The earth’s natural resources are finite, which means that if we use them continuously, we will eventually exhaust them. This basic observation is undeniable. But another way of looking at the issue is far more relevant to assessing people’s well-being. Our exhaustible and unreproducible natural resources, if measured in terms of their prospective contribution to […]| Econlib
“ Innovation”: creativity; novelty; the process of devising a new idea or thing, or improving an existing idea or thing. Although the word carries a positive connotation in American culture, innovation, like all human activities, has costs as well as benefits. These costs and benefits have preoccupied economists, political philosophers, and artists for centuries. Nature […]| Econlib
New York State legislators defend the War Emergency Tenant Protection Act—also known as rent control—as a way of protecting tenants from war-related housing shortages. The war referred to in the law is not the 2003 war in Iraq, however, or the Vietnam War; it is World War II. That is when rent control started in […]| Econlib
A monopoly is an enterprise that is the only seller of a good or service. In the absence of government intervention, a monopoly is free to set any price it chooses and will usually set the price that yields the largest possible profit. Just being a monopoly need not make an enterprise more profitable than […]| Econlib
The rate of interest measures the percentage reward a lender receives for deferring the consumption of resources until a future date. Correspondingly, it measures the price a borrower pays to have resources now. Suppose I have $100 today that I am willing to lend for one year at an annual interest rate of 5 percent. […]| Econlib
Insurance plays a central role in the functioning of modern economies. Life insurance offers protection against the economic impact of an untimely death; health insurance covers the sometimes extraordinary costs of medical care; and bank deposits are insured by the federal government (see financial regulation). In each case, the insured pays a small premium in […]| Econlib
The growth of productivity—output per unit of input—is the fundamental determinant of the growth of a country’s material standard of living. The most commonly cited measures are output per worker and output per hour—measures of labor productivity. One cannot have sustained growth in output per person—the most general measure of a country’s material standard of […]| Econlib
The Internet and Economics “The Internet changes everything”—or so we were told at the height of the Internet craze. According to a prominent Wall Street Journal article titled “Goodbye Supply and Demand,” one of the changes it was claimed to have brought about was a transformation of the basic economic forces at work in the […]| Econlib
“ Free market” is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is undertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents. These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or nontangible services. Thus, when I buy […]| Econlib
Economic competition takes place in markets—meeting grounds of intending suppliers and buyers.1 Typically, a few sellers compete to attract favorable offers from prospective buyers. Similarly, intending buyers compete to obtain good offers from suppliers. When a contract is concluded, the buyer and seller exchange property rights in a good, service, or asset. Everyone interacts voluntarily, […]| Econlib
The most basic laws in economics are the law of supply and the law of demand. Indeed, almost every economic event or phenomenon is the product of the interaction of these two laws. The law of supply states that the quantity of a good supplied (i.e., the amount owners or producers offer for sale) rises […]| Econlib
The average U.S. consumer now enjoys a larger and higher-quality home than ever before. In 2001, the average home was 1,693 square feet, while in 1960 it was less than 1,200 square feet. In 2001, 58 percent of homes had three or more bedrooms, and 57 percent had 1.5 or more bathrooms. Compare that with […]| Econlib
George Akerlof, along with Michael Spence and Joseph Stiglitz, received the 2001 Nobel Prize “for their analyses of markets with asymmetric information.” Although much of economics is built on the assumption of perfect information, various economists in the past had considered the effects of imperfect information. Two giants in this area were ludwig von […]| Econlib
Governments have been trying to set maximum or minimum prices since ancient times. The Old Testament prohibited interest on loans to fellow Israelites; medieval governments fixed the maximum price of bread; and in recent years, governments in the United States have fixed the price of gasoline, the rent on apartments in New York City, and […]| Econlib
Scott Alexander pushes back against the argument that building more housing in a city will reduce housing prices in that city. He begins by noting that housing costs tend to be higher in places that are relatively dense, such as New York and San Francisco. He is aware that this argument is subject to the […]| Econlib
