Many teachers know that encouraging interest in the dismal science can be difficult because students often find economics abstract and, well, dismal. It’s basically a truism then that if economists want to engage students, we should use interesting and relatable examples. And more often than not, this means mining pop culture for teaching moments
The 100 th anniversary of the beginning of World War I seems like an ideal opportunity to spread a message of peace and economic cooperation; sadly, 2014 has so far been a year of new and renewed conflict far more than one of reconciliation. By now, talk of the horrors of war is nothing new. Everyone knows about the total destruction war brings;
The Economist ran a good article last week about the enormous difficulty of being an entrepreneur. In particular, the piece emphasizes the importance of doing away with the mythology of entrepreneurship as a life of romance, adventure, and the heroic pursuit of greatness. In reality, entrepreneurship is grueling and unforgiving, and can destroy
[caption id=”attachment_12130” align=”alignright” width=”131”] Rudolf Hilferding[/caption] Paul Krugman isn’t the first economist to project his own faults onto opponents: adversaries of Austrian economics have been doing it since the early days. One lesser-known example is Rudolf Hilferding, a contemporary of Mises and member of the “
Further to Joe Salerno’s post on “ Hayek and the Intellectuals ,” it’s worth adding that Hayek was not alone in thinking of the intellectual class as naturally hostile to the market economy. In particular, there are many similarities between Hayek’s ideas and those found in Schumpeter’s “Sociology of the Intellectuals.” Schumpeter famously argued
IKEA has announced it will be raising the “ minimum wage ” of its US employees to $10.76 per hour, an increase of about 17% from the current minimum. The news comes in the midst of another “national discussion” (often code for anti-economic hysteria) about minimum wage “reform” (always code for an increase). Economic criticisms of the public
Although libertarians and Austrian economists have been interested for a long time in the relationship between art and liberty, there’s been relatively little effort to develop a distinctly liberty- or market-oriented form of literary theory; critical theory is a playground for myriad “isms,” but libertarianism isn’t often counted among them.
John Lott writes in Barron’s that we should be sceptical of the populist economics trend that’s been prevalent in the past few years. Specifically, Lott criticizes Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of Freakonomics , for peddling a kind of “naïve economics” that fascinates readers, but doesn’t hold up to serious scrutiny (rather than “naïve
There’s a great story in the news this week about Mike Watts , a British entrepreneur who’s found a creative solution to one of economics’ most clichéd questions: “Who will build the roads?” Ever since a landslide in February, a section of the A431 roadway between Bath and Bristol has been closed to traffic. The closure has been making life very
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.