James R. Otteson, Adam Smith’s Marketplace of Life . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 338 pp. $26 (paperback), ISBN: 0-521-01656-8. Reviewed for EH.NET by Jeffrey T. Young, Department of Economics, St. Lawrence University. For too long Adam Smith has been viewed almost exclusively as the intellectual property of economists.
The 2018 Nobel Prize in economics has gone to Yale’s William Nordhaus for work in environmental economics and NYU’s Paul Romer for work on economic growth. Both have long been considered front-runners for the award (Romer was described as a likely winner back in the 1990s ) though the combination is unexpected. (The Nobel committee may be making a
The Austrians have long argued that equilibrium models of economic phenomena cannot capture the causal, realistic aspect of human behavior. ”All things are subject to the law of cause and effect,” says Menger in the famous opening line of his Principles of Economics. Formal economic models, in contrast, typically depict systems of equations in
Henry Manne passed away yesterday at the age of 86. Manne was a wonderfully smart, creative, and iconoclastic writer and teacher best known for his work on corporate and securities law, particularly his vigorous defense of insider trading and his pathbreaking analysis of the market for corporate control. He wrote on many other topics as well,
Dick Langlois on Joel Kayne’s new book, A History of Balance, 1250-1375: The Emergence of a New Model of Equilibrium and Its Impact on Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2014): His argument is that medieval scholastic thought changed radically over this period, and produced by its end a different and arguably more sophisticated model of how the
The current issue of Cato Unbound features Roderick Long’s critique of “Conflationism,” defined as the “pervasive conflation of corporatist plutocracy with libertarian laissez-faire.” As Roderick rightly points out, in the mixed economy large corporations are among the prime beneficiaries of government largess, such that a wholesale defense of
Roderick Long has kindly responded to my critique of his essay on corporatism. I don’t find Roderick’s reply very convincing, however. I don’t have posting privileges on Cato Unbound so I’ll offer a brief response here. My basic critique of Roderick’s position is two-fold. First, on substance: Roderick’s arguments strike me as a form of what
Jimmy Winkelmann, a freshman here at the University of Missouri, established The South Butt clothing company, poking fun at today’s logo-obsessed youth. The result? You guessed it: a cease-and-desist letter from The North Face , accusing Winkelmann of sowing “confusion” in the marketplace and violating its intellectual-property rights.
A central premise of Keynesian economics is that, during a recession, government spending increases total output through a “multiplier” effect. If the multiplier is 1.0, then every dollar spent by the government on its own consumption -- rather than reducing someone else’s consumption or investment by $1 -- adds a dollar to GDP. Money for nothing!
The business of political capitalism, that is. Like Enron , Goldman operates primarily in the nebulous world of public-private interaction. It is the US’s most politically powerful financial firm, skilled at navigating the byzantine regulations governing the virtually nationalized US financial sector. Goldman’s eye-popping $3.4 billion
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.