The stimulus package was passed with much talk of Keynesian multipliers and boosting aggregate demand. But now that the stimulus has barely dented the unemployment rate, and with government spending and deficits soaring, it's natural to turn to Hayek.

Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk, discusses his paper, "Gambling with Other People's Money: How Perverted Incentives Created the Financial Crisis..."

For an economist, these are the best of times and the worst of times. . . .

Should we care about Goldman's profits and compensation?...

President Obama has reappointed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, praising his creativity in preventing another Great Depression...

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama pledged to cut the federal budget deficit in half in four years...

THE HOUSE has passed an $819 billion spending package...

President Obama is eager to attack the economic crisis...

President-elect Obama announced the other day that the government would do "whatever it takes" to revive the economy...

Secretary Paulson might be the only person in America who worries that consumers haven't borrowed enough money...

People ask me if the current mess feels like 1929...

Many believe that wild greed and market failure led us into this sorry mess...

The collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, and the bailouts of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG, have led to an inevitable call for more regulation...

Wall Street is all about profit....

You're rooting for the Patriots to lose...

Love that word—stimulus...

To hear most politicians talk, you’d think that exports are the key to a country’s prosperity and that imports are a threat to its way of life...

Economists can tell you, using publicly available data, that income inequality is growing in the United States...

I'm thinking of a country...

Labor unions' importance in the workplace has fallen steadily since 1950, when roughly a third of American workers were unionized...

We call football a game...

I last saw Milton Friedman a few days shy of his 94th birthday, just a few months ago...

The Sagamore rotary is gone, and the rejoicing is near universal.

Is the embargo a strategic mistake? Maybe, though it’s easy to encourage Israel to “search for weapons” while sitting safely in the United States. Is it a crime? I’d say the moral responsibility lies elsewhere...

In my narrative of the financial crisis, Gambling with Other People’s Money, I argue that excessive leverage was favored by the executives as a way of inflating returns and generating high profits that justified large levels of compensation...

Having done 13 or so podcasts on the financial crisis, I give my take in the latest episode of EconTalk, drawing on my recent paper, Gambling with Other People’s Money...

James DeLong asks the right question. What has the financial sector contributed that justifies this...

I really like Barry Ritholtz. I learned a lot from Bailout Nation and from interviewing him. His blog, The Big Picture, is consistently interesting. But there is a mystery about his recent writing on the crisis...

Rescuing Greece isn’t the end of the problem, it’s more akin to the Bear Stearns rescue of March 2008. It’s just the beginning of something that won’t end well...

Social security is an intellectually bankrupt system that is on its way to being financially bankrupt...Please, let’s kill the social security system. Slowly, but surely...

[Social security is] mainly a Ponzi scheme, an agreement to tax each generation to pay for the last one, a scheme that works pretty well until the baby boomers come along...

But there is one change that took place in the 1970s that I think is under-appreciated by economists. Divorce rates went up virtually everywhere in the 1970s. People also delayed getting married...

John Paulson expected housing prices to go down. The ABACUS vehicle at the heart of the transaction allowed him to profit when they did go down. Who was on the other side of the transaction...

The Kindle (and I love mine and use it often) is a bit like a movie that is a film of a play. It can be good but to our modern eye it looks weird and fake...

[I]t’s a bit weird to hear Obama complain about irresponsible industries. His policies and those of his predecessors enabled that irresponsibility...

Mark Warner thinks Mitch McConnell is either a fool or a liar. Ezra Klein reports...

The Democratic Party put me on their mailing list and they sent me this clip today (among others). I think it’s supposed to make me feel good about expanding unemployment benefits.

All of the reaction to the crisis from Bush through Obama, presumes we can just squeeeze over here, push something over there, institute this program for homeowners, bail out these banks, turn this knob just so, and so on and so on to keep the system afloat without any pain. . . .

Freakonomics has started podcasting and interviewed me the other day about what I would do if I were in charge of the government. . . .

David Leonhardt argues that the health care changes will work to reverse the inequality of the age of Reagan. . . .

Allan Greenspan explains why he had nothing to do with the collapse of the housing market and the financial sector. . . .

I’m surprised it passed. . . .

Methinks1776, a valued commenter here at the Cafe points out the 2/3 of the American people opposed the health care legislation. . . .

Here’s an amazing story from CNN because it’s so ordinary. . . .

Is Hayek an important enough economist to be taught in Texas schools alongside Keynes and Friedman? . . .

One difference between economists and others is that economists tend to be less impressed by motivation and more impressed by what people actually do. . . .

In this post, I disagreed with Menzie Chinn and argued that CBO estimates of the impactof the stimulus are not estimates. . . .

Menzie Chinn invokes the CBO “estimates” to argue against those who say the stimulus didn’t work. . . .

Daniel Kuehn comments on this post about how United States Sugar used environtalism to exploit the taxpayer: From a purely environmental perspective, the move does make a lot of sense. . . .

Florida’s plan to save the everglades really saved United States Sugar. . . .

I get a lot of emails from people worrying about America losing jobs to China. . . .

Mark Steyn nails it (HT: Gary Schiff) in a piece on Greece and the path we’re on in the US. My favorite part: We hard-hearted, small-government guys are often damned as selfish types who care nothing for the general welfare. . . .

One of the advantages of studying economics (at least the way it was taught to me) was to pay attention to what people do rather than what they say. . . .

There’s a debate going on in the punditsphere about whether America is ungovernable. . . .

Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times: Of the festivals of nonsense that periodically overtake American politics, surely the silliest is the argument that because Washington is having a particularly snowy winter it proves that climate change is a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. . . .

David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times: Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. . . .

I will be on C-Span’s BookTV tomorrow (Tuesday, the 16th) at 8 pm ET, talking about Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations. . . .

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on trade from his book, The Dignity of Difference: In an age of resurgent tribalism, the global market offers—as trade has always done—an alternative script to difference as a source of conflict, and therefore tragedy. . . .

I don’t think bankers planned on being bailed out. . . .

This may be the last straw: Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying instead that a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. . . .

I’d like readers to keep a lookout for articles that talk about the snow storms of the East coast having a silver lining–the increased demand for gutter repairs, roof repairs and snow cleanup that will stimulate the economy. . . .

The President is a man of principle. . . .

Here. An excerpt: He has been narrow, not broad. . . .

Mark Thoma quotes Bruce Bartlett who quotes a poll that shows Republicans are crazy. . . .

The U.S. government borrows money easily because we’re the tallest pygmy. . . .

Brad DeLong mocks Steve Horwitz here for suggesting that the stimulus didn’t create jobs. . . .

Barney Frank doesn’t know what to do: “I’ve said we should abolish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their current form and come up with a whole new system of housing finance,” said Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. . . .

The proposed budget is obscene enough. . . .

At Big Think, they used one of my questions in their interview with Barney Frank: Question: How can Fannie and Freddie be structured to avoid the moral hazard problem and a too-cozy relationship with regulators? . . .

Phenomenal charts from the Dallas Fed. . . .

A hayeku (HT: Ike Pigott for the name and the encouragement) is a haiku from an Hayekian perspective. . . .

More resources including lyrics and a free download of the song are here. . . .

You can get the lyrics and download the song “Fear the Boom and Bust” (the music behind the Keynes/Hayek rap video) at no charge on my website with John Papola, EconStories.tv. . . .

Gail Collins and David Brooks discuss what Congress ought to do about health care. Gail Collins says: I only have one thought, which is that the Democrats should pass the health care bill now. . . .

In synagogues around the world this week, Jews read from the Torah about the exodus from Egypt. . . .

In America we have what’s called a republic. . . .

It has nothing to do with the bloated budget, the payoffs to political friends like the unions in bailing out Detroit and exempting them from health care taxes, the rising debt, the coddling of Wall Street, the stimulus package that didn’t stimulate, the grandiosity of redesigning the health care system and the energy sector. . . .

“Massachusetts has health care and so the rest of the country would like to have that too,” Pelosi said, referring to the state’s health care program. . . .

The press is saying that Obama’s agenda is in jeopardy because he has lost a filibuster-proof advantage in the Senate. . . .

If Brown wins today in Massachusetts, we’re going to hear all kinds of explanations. . . .

First this spectacular analysis of confusing levels and rates of growth. . . .

Wisdom from Scott Sumner on bubbles, Fama and the efficient market hypothesis. . . .

I want to thank Stephan Cost who found this document for me, an analysis by Deloitte and Touche of the 2001 regulation that changed the capital requirements for various types of investments, taking effect on 1/1/2002. . . .

I am having trouble verifying how the rules regarding capital requirements changed between 2002 and 2004 for financial institutions. . . .

In light of the breakdown of security procedures resulting in near catastrophe with the underwear bomber, the Obama Administration has announced an expanded no-fly list to reduce future risks to airline travelers. . . .

This is from today’s New York Times (and not The Onion). . . .

Planning a podcast with Mike Munger devoted to ten interesting questions, six minutes per question. . . .

Just a reminder to make a donation to the EconStories project–a web site that will host the rap video I’m working on with John Papola plus much additional material on macro including interviews with Robert Skidelsky, Larry White, John Taylor, Robert Barro, and Joseph Stiglitz. . . .

If you’re going to be in Atlanta for the AEA meetings, come see me and come see the world premiere of the Keynes/Hayek rap video. . . .

The raw footage of my conversation with Robert Skidelsky is now up at the NewsHour. . . .

We’re building a website that will be the home for the Keynes/Hayek rap video along with interviews with leading macroeconomists and other good stuff. . . .

A number of folks have asked me (Sam Grove in the comments to this post, for example) for my impression of how the piece on the NewsHour came out relative to the actual interview, its fairness, etc. . . .

It is weird to me that some people are still worrying about deflation. . . .

Bryan Caplan dismisses Hayek’s contributions as flabby: I’ve long since lost all patience with Hayek. . . .

Five senior executives at A.I.G. threatened to quit last week if Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s pay czar, cuts their pay significantly. . . .

I’ll be testifying before the Joint Economic Committee tomorrow (Thursday) at 10 am eastern time. . . .

It must be tough being part of the Washington press corps. . . .

The taxpayers ended up paying the price, not the risk-takers. . . .

The consensus is that it’s still going to get worse before it gets better. . . .

An excerpt: The closed-mindedness of these supposed men of science, their willingness to go to any lengths to defend a preconceived message, is surprising even to me. . . .

The AP reports. . . .

I want to get rid of government rescues. . . .

If creditors know they’ll be bailed out, aggressive investors borrow from them, leveraging their returns and paying themselves a lot of money along the way, justified by the short-term profits. . . .

I think Paul Krugman needs to get out and about a little more often. . . .

If you tried but couldn’t get to my piece on financial reform at the Economists’ Voice, you can get it here. . . .

So when someone says the TARP was central to preventing disaster, don’t disagree. . . .

This (HT: Drudge) is how “the system” works. . . .

There are advantage to universal standards. . . .

This is the opening of my essay that I blogged on last week, “How Little We Know,” on the hopes for financial reform: . . . .

A very illuminating story on “jobs saved.” . . .

Thomas Sowell has said that economics helps you understand that there are no solutions, only tradeoffs. . . .

Krugman and DeLong have been attacking Mankiw and Meltzer for mocking the “jobs saved” metric of the Obama Administration. . . .

My favorite perspective on the political economy of counterfactuals came from a reporter (Tom Foreman of CNN) who gave me his analysis of politicians and the economy. . . .

When losses are truncated by bailouts, you get anti-social risk-taking. . . .

NOAA announced (HT: Drudge) that October was the third coldest October in the United States on record. . . .

The Gallup poll has discovered (HT: Catherine Rampell) that Saturday is the day of the week that consumers spend the most money. . . .

It’s up to 10.2%. . . .

Many economists attribute the rise in the gross domestic product in the third quarter to the $787 billion federal stimulus package approved in February...

Thought this story from Newsweek on Soros’s new economics/policy enterprising was unintentionally amusing:...

Here is the video where Obama uses the Post Office as an example of why the public option won’t hurt private competitors...

The theme of this story is that a recent government report overstated (surprise!) the number of jobs “saved or created” by the stimulus spending...

Video of my testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday, talking about executive compensation (and the financial crisis) is here...

In response to this podcast I did with Mike Munger, listener Milli Pritchett writes:...

This (HT: Drudge) is the weirdest story of the year:...

The Senate must soon increase the national debt limit to above $13 trillion — and Democrats are looking for political cover...

As I noted yesterday, four government agencies account for 86% of the $110 billion the government has managed to spend since the “stimulus” bill was enacted last February–HHS, Labor, Education and Social Security...

Something is happening in the field of economics when two people with pretty different worldviews say almost the same thing in their reflections on yesterday’s Nobel Prize:...

In the first eight months of the $787 billion “stimulus” package, the government has managed to spend about $111 billion, less than half of the funds that are available...

An interesting pairing for tomorrow’s prize would be Robert Shiller and Nassim Taleb...

Krugman insults Arnold Kling (HT: THM) But what none of the participants in the debate seem to realize is that Arnold is basically reinventing 1934 macroeconomics...

From the WSJ: The Obama administration’s pay czar is planning to clamp down on compensation at firms receiving large sums of government aid by cutting annual cash salaries for many of the top employees under his authority, according to people familiar with the matter...

Joshua, in the comments to this post, asks the excellent question: My understanding is that the Wall Street guys had large fortunes in the stock of their companies...

According to Seeking Alpha which cites Bloomberg, here are Richard Fuld’s stock sales of his Lehman stock...

I’m looking for some help from anyone with knowledge of life in the investment bank world...

From this Washington Post article: Look at that last bar in the chart...

Bryan writes over at EconLog: Counterintuitive claim: Free trade makes countries richer, even if the other countries have big advantages like cheaper labor or more advanced technology...

The WSJ reports: The Obama administration is close to committing as much as $35 billion to help beleaguered state and local housing agencies continue to provide mortgages to low- and moderate-income families, according to administration officials...

Tyler Cowen recently gave a talk on what is distinctive about George Mason economics...

The post office will be taking a few billion dollars of money...

The Keynesian argument for government spending is that when people are scared of the future, they put their money in their mattress instead of spending on consumption goods or investment goods...

Richard Posner has read Keynes’s General Theory so you don’t have to. He does a superb job of summarizing (HT: Greg Mankiw) what Keynes actually said...

The paradox of markets is this: there is no single price even for apparently homogenous products, yet transactions by others, buying and selling similar goods, affect the price I pay or can charge...

The Secretary of Energy gives us his view of Americans (HT: Drudge): When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons...

The Price of Everything is now available in paperback at Amazon...

I have removed my post from earlier today, quoting and discussing a New York Times story about Obama’s speech about Wall St...

The other day I was speaking about swine flu with a friend of mine who’s a doctor...

One year ago next week, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was sold and A.I.G. was rescued by a huge federal bailout...

Why does the impending fiscal disaster known as Medicare justify increasing the role of the federal government and reducing the role of prices which are the essence of Medicare?...

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks...

The latest episode of EconTalk is Mike Munger on cultural norms...

I am hoping someone out there can help me on this or knows someone who can help me...

In an incredibly misleading story that is making the rounds, the New York Times reports:...

It turns out that in the latest edition of my novel, The Choice: A Fable of Free Trade and Protectionism, I imagined a weird version of the Cash for Clunkers program...

What are the key principles of reform that would allow us to talk about reform without putting it in scare quotes?...

In this post, I asked you to respond to this question I received from a reader, Tom:...

Sara Paretsky, in an article in the NYT entitled Le Treatment, described an emergency room in France and observes that rude bureaucrats in the French health system are worth putting up with, given the price:...

Turns out it isn’t Cash for Clunkers...

One of the unintended consequences of the cash for clunkers program is that it is hurting charities...

I find it fascinating that everyone assumes the economy is on its way to recovering...

From Yahoo news (HT: Drudge): The mounting price tag for the rescue of Fannie and its goverment-sponsored sibling, Freddie Mac, is surpassed only by insurer American International Group Inc., which has received $182.5 billion in financial support from the government so far...

When people talk about their willingness to raise taxes, it is useful to remember that they are usually thinking of someone else...

Daniel Okent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, talks about the book with EconTalk host Russ Roberts...

Drawing on a recent article of his in the New Yorker, [Louis] Menand talks about the state of knowledge in psychiatry and the scientific basis for making conclusions about mental illness and various therapies...

Gary Belsky, Editor-in-Chief at ESPN The Magazine, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his career path in journalism and the day-to-day life of editing a major American magazine...

Ed Leamer of UCLA talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the state of econometrics. He discusses his 1983 article, "Let's Take the 'Con' Out of Econometrics" and the recent interest in natural experiments as a way to improve empirical work...

Roberts discusses how they came up with the idea for a rap about economics, what audiences they are reaching, and the economic implications of some of the Keynesian based policies implemented to deal with the current deficit...

We’ll explain how a VAT works, weigh its pros and the cons, and ask how it might affect public policy in the US...

Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his latest thoughts on robustness, fragility, debt, insurance, uncertainty, exercise, moral hazard, knowledge, and the challenges of fame and fortune...

Paul Romer of Stanford of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about charter cities, Romer's idea for helping the poorest of the poor around the world...

Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the world of profit, money, love, gifts, and incentives.

Diane Ravitch of NYU talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in her new book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.

Yochai Benkler of Harvard University talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about net neutrality, access to the internet, and innovation.

Samuel Fleischacker and Russell Roberts talked about The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. . . .

Glenn Reynolds talks to Russ Roberts about popular economic literacy and the epic rap music video he created with John Papola starring two economic gangstas: John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. . . .

Nobel Laureate Michael Spence of Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the Commission on Growth and Development talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the determinants of economic growth. . . .

As part of his continuing series Making Sense of financial news, Paul Solman has a unique look at the legacy of economist John Maynard Keynes, who first introduced the concept of government intervention in the economy, and his countertenor Friedrich Hayek. . . .

Russ Roberts, George Mason University economist and host of EconTalk, explains why he thinks is economics is an imperfect science. . . .

With the unemployment rate expected to stay above 10 percent well into next year, the Obama administration is holding a summit with economists and business leaders to discuss job creation. . . .

Charles Calomiris of Columbia Business School talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the financial crisis...

David Brady of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about American public opinion on changing the health care system...

Christopher Hitchens talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about George Orwell...

Eric Hanushek of Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the current state of education and education policy...

How Perverted Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis...

Arthur De Vany, of the University of California, Irvine, and creator of Evolutionary Fitness, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball and Evolutionary Fitness, De Vany's ideas about diet and fitness. . . .

Steve Meyer, music industry veteran and publisher of the Disc and Dat Newsletter, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the evolution of the music industry and the impact of the digital revolution. . . .

Don Boudreaux of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about public choice: the application of economics to the political process. . . .

Katherine Newman, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Newman's case studies of fast-food workers in Harlem. . . .

Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the history of bailouts in recent times, beginning with Lockheed and Chrysler in the 1970s and continuing through the current financial crisis. . . .

Garett Jones of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the art of communicating economics via puzzles and short provocative insights. . . .

Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps of Columbia University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the market for labor, unemployment, and the evolution of macroeconomics over the past century. . . .

Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk, does a monologue this week on the economics of trade and specialization. . . .

Larry White of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Hayek's ideas on the business cycle and money. . . .

On today's Planet Money: We bring you a story about a cable tv producer from New Jersey, a podcasting libertarian economist, an international pop superstar and the two dead economists who brought them all together. . . .

A rap video that pits economic theories against each other caught the eye of the young pop singer. . . .

Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about many things. . . .

Michael Belongia of the University of Mississippi and former economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the inner workings, politics, and economics of the Federal Reserve. . . .

James Hamilton of the University of California, San Diego, and blogger at EconBrowser talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the rising levels of the national debt and the growing Federal budget deficit. . . .

Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution talks about the ideas in his book, Market Failure vs. Government Failure, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. . . .

Thomas Rustici of George Mason University and author of Lessons from the Great Depression talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the impact of the Smoot-Hawley Act on the economy. . . .

Arnold Kling of EconLog and the author (with Nick Schulz) of From Poverty to Prosperity: Intangible Assets, Hidden Liabilities and the Lasting Triumph over Scarcity talks about the book with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. . . .

Megan McArdle, who writes the blog Asymmetrical Information at The Atlantic, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about debt and the challenge of self-restraint. . . .

Peter Boettke of George Mason University and author of Challenging Institutional Analysis and Development: The Bloomington School (co-authored with Paul Dragos Aligica), talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Bloomington School--the political economy of Elinor Ostrom (2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics), Vincent Ostrom, and their students and colleagues at Indiana University. . . .

Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in her book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (co-authored with Kenneth Rogoff). . . .

Richard Posner, federal judge and prolific author, discusses the financial crisis with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Posner (despite the title of his recent book on the crisis, A Failure of Capitalism) places most of the blame for the crisis on the Federal Reserve, inattentive regulators and the subsidization of risk. . . .

If only preventing financial crashes were as straightforward as preventing airlines crashes. . . .

Scott Sumner of Bentley University and the blog The Money Illusion talks with host Russ Roberts about monetary policy and the state of the economy. . . .

Michael Heller of Columbia Law School and author of The Gridlock Economy talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the book and the idea that fragmented ownership is a barrier to innovation...

Goldman Sachs' third quarter profits were an immodest $3.2 billion...

Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the limits of prices and markets, especially in the area of health...

Daniel Willingham of the University of Virginia and author of the book Why Don't Students Like School? talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how the brain works and the implications for teaching, learning, and educational policy...

Gary Stern, former President of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Stern's book, Too Big To Fail (co-authored with Ron Feldman), a prescient warning of the moral hazard created when government rescues creditors of financial institutions from the consequences of bankruptcy...

William Cohan, author of House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Steet, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the life and death of Bear Stearns...

Paul Buchheit, developer of Gmail and founder of FriendFeed, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the evolution of the Gmail project, how innovation works and doesn't work in a large corporation, how Google has changed as it has grown, and corporate culture generally...

One Year In: What Do We Know About the Financial Crisis?...

John Nye of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Great Depression, the evolution of the State, and attitudes people have toward free markets...

Tyler Cowen of George Mason University and author of Create Your Own Economy talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his recent book...

Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about cultural norms--the subtle signals we send to each other in our daily interactions...

Imagine you’re a member of Congress...

Paul Graham, essayist, programmer and partner in the y-combinator talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about start-ups, innovation, and creativity...

This is an awkward story for Barney Frank...

Peter Blair Henry of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about economic development...

John Taylor of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the fundamental causes of the financial crisis of 2008...

The CIT Group, one of the nation’s largest commercial lenders serving a million small and midsized companies, is on the verge of collapse...

According to the Drudge Report, here is the Republicans' chart that describes the new proposed US health care system will work:...

Justin Fox, author of The Myth of the Rational Market, talks about the ideas in his book with EconTalk host Russ Roberts...

The planet's rich nations met this week to discuss, among other issues, ways to help the planet's poor nations...

Shopping at Wal-Mart yesterday, I asked the cashier if she liked her job...

Paul Collier of Oxford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his new book, Wars, Guns, and Votes, a study of democracy and violence...

Novelist Mark Helprin talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about copyright and the ideas in his book, Digital Barbarism...

Greg Mankiw writes: For obvious reasons, I have been thinking a lot about healthcare recently...

His TED talk is here...

There have been a few regulations over time...

Michael Munger, of Duke University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about franchising, particularly car dealerships...

The way the financial industry is regulated will change dramatically if a proposal by the Obama administration passes Congress...

I’ve never met Russell Roberts, a George Mason University economics professor also affiliated with the Mercatus Center and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution...

David Leonhardt writes (HT: Elizabeth Terrell): Milton Friedman’s beloved line is a good way to frame the issue: There is no such thing as a free lunch...

Diane Feinstein and Susan Collins are disappointed in the political process...

I don't get it (from Yahoo): Securitization, or the packaging and selling of loans as securities, has been blamed by critics for eroding lending standards in the mortgage and other lending businesses...

This post looked at the proportion of children who have done better than their parents...

In the last part of this post, I issued a challenge: I continue to ask the question: name an empirical study that uses sophisticated statistical techniques that was so well done, it ended a controversy and created a consensus—a consensus where former opponents of one viewpoint had to concede they were wrong because of the quality of the empirical work...

Over at Freakonomics (HT: Planet Money), Justin Wolfers cites this graph as proof that the rich have gotten most of the income gains in the last 35 years:...

Charles Platt, author and journalist, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts what it was like to apply for a job at Wal-Mart, get one, and work there...

In response to this post, a lot of comments discussed inequality...

My colleague Bryan Caplan at EconLog on how economics is evolving: I've studied economics for over twenty years...

Congress is thinking of "reining in" executive pay (HT: Drudge Report)...

This is a speech I gave at a conference in Utah on globalization and trade...

From Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism: Those who lack any but a materialist approach to life see both acquisition and de-acquistion, fine tuned, as the keys to a blessed state...

Innocent Bystanders has updated the graph (HT: Zev Fredman) using the May numbers:...

Riccardo Rebonato of the Royal Bank of Scotland and author of Plight of the Fortune Tellers talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the challenges of measuring risk and making decisions and creating regulation in the face of risk and uncertainty...

There are signs that the economy might be recovering...

From the New York Times: President Obama will push General Motors into bankruptcy protection on Monday, making a risky bet that by temporarily nationalizing the onetime icon of American capitalism, he can save at least a diminished automaker that is competitive...

The New York Times reports under this photo: Representative Barney Frank, and Senators Charles E. Schumer and Christopher J. Dodd would play critical roles guiding the administration’s financial overhaul through Congress...

The AP reports (HT: Drudge): White House spokesman Robert Gibbs is declining to say what it cost for President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, to eat dinner and take in a play in New York over the weekend...

The stimulus package was signed into law February 17th with great urgency and fanfare...

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago and Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the rule of law...

The Washington Post reports: President Obama touted his plans for clean energy and economic stimulus Wednesday at an Air Force base near Las Vegas, pointing to the base's vast array of solar panels as a model for the nation as it seeks to reduce its dependence on foreign oil...

I couldn't make this up: Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday...

President Obama has overseen sweeping changes in the role of government in the economy, intervening to prevent massive failures and promising to step up anti-trust laws...

This is the sixth and concluding podcast in the EconTalk Book Club discussion of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith...

Peter Leeson of George Mason University and author of The Invisible Hook talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of 18th century pirates and what we can learn from their behavior...

I am scheduled to interview Riccardo Rebonato tomorrow for EconTalk...

A little perspective...

According to my car thermometer, it was 54 degrees this morning at 8 am here in DC on May 19...

Is it a good idea to have medical records stored in electronic form rather than paper?...

A number of people have sent me versions of this graph that Greg Mankiw has now noted...

Michele Boldrin of Washington University in St. Louis talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about intellectual property and Boldrin's book, co-written with David Levine, Against Intellectual Property...

Here are two totally intuitive common sense arguments: "Buying local is better than buying from a chain store—the money stays in the community."...

Here is Adam Smith speculating in The Wealth of Nations on the dynamic nature of the British labor market if all tariffs and barriers to imports were removed...

The AP reports: As thousands of General Motors workers await word on more U.S. plant closures, reports that the company plans to import Chinese-made vehicles to the U.S. have created a political problem for the automaker and the White House...

From USA Today: For a guy grappling with recession, bank and auto bailouts, and record-setting budget deficits, President Obama also has a longer-term headache: The worsening financial condition of Social Security and Medicare as the Baby Boomers age...

This is the fifth podcast in the EconTalk Book Club discussion of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith...

Todd Zywicki, commenting on David Brooks, writes: But it seems to me that it is time to revisit this well and think about an intellectual defense of freedom that is more than "it delivers the goods."...

Cool people (and many of my friends, cool and otherwise) hate Wal-Mart and sneer at those who shop there...

I like to call myself a classical liberal, someone who is in favor of personal responsibility, limited government and voluntary collective action...

Alan Wolfe, Professor of Political Science at Boston College and author of The Future of Liberalism, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about liberalism...

The Washington Post headline: Obama's Budget Knife Yields Modest Trims...

Deep truths from Clifford Asness, manager of AQR Capital Management, a $20 billion hedge fund, responds to President Obama's complaint that the hedge funds ruined the rescue of Chrysler for refusing to "sacrifice." (HT: Alan Schram)...

I will be speaking on trade and globalization in Salt Lake City, May 20, in the morning...

Paul Krugman notes that nominal wages are falling for some workers...

David Brooks, in this provocative critique of Republican Libertarianism, uses the insights of Hayek without mentioning him...

Ed Leamer, of UCLA and author of Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how we should use patterns in macroeconomic data and stories about those patterns to improve our understanding of the economy...

In this post, I quoted Robert Frank: For example, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal long ago, I hired a cook who had no formal education but was spectacularly intelligent and resourceful...

Here is an interesting exam question that could be the only question on the final exam of a first rate economics class...

This is the fourth podcast in the EconTalk Book Club discussion of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith...

Ricardo Reis of Columbia University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Keynesian economics in the classroom and in research...

This is the third podcast in the EconTalk Book Club discussion of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith...

I know a lot of people don't look at the world the way I do...

EconTalk host Russ Roberts talks with reporter Robert Pollie about the basics of wealth and growth...

This is the second podcast in the EconTalk Book Club discussion of The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith...

Don Boudreaux, of George Mason University, talks with Hoover research fellow and EconTalk host Russ Roberts about...

The latest episode of EconTalk is the first installment of a series of podcasts with my colleague Dan Klein on The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith...

Just a heads up to anyone interested in the EconTalk book club on The Theory of Moral Sentiments...

Dan Klein, of George Mason University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Adam Smith's lesser-known masterpiece, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, on the 250th anniversary of its initial publication...

I'm still not sure how important Fannie and Freddie were to the housing calamity but I continue to do some research...

It's kosher because it's not pork, at least that what the Mayor thinks...

The President spoke today about his latest attempts to save the auto industry...

The White House, stung by the backlash of giving AIG money and then seeing it spent in the way that Washington and Main Street doesn't like, seems intent on not making the same mistake with the automakers...

Brink Lindsey, of the Cato Institute and author of The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the interaction between culture and politics and prosperity...

Two highlights from last night's press conference with the President:...

Nassim Taleb talks about the financial crisis, how we misunderstand rare events, the fragility of the banking system, the moral hazard of government bailouts, the unprecedented nature of really, really bad events, the contribution of human psychology to misinterpreting probability and the dangers of hubris...

Can you believe this?...

From the New York Times: Under the photo it says: Representative Barney Frank was among the politicians charged with creating legislation to recoup the bonus money at A.I.G...

Fannie and Freddie are going to pay bonuses, too...

From the New Mexico Independent: Tom Udall and a group of fellow U.S. senators has sent a letter to embattled AIG CEO Edward Liddy...

A friend of mine expressed surprise the other day when I said I wasn't sure if the stock market would bounce back fairly quickly...

Mexico is putting tariffs on 90 American products after the killing of the pilot program that lets in Mexican trucks (HT: Carrie Conko)...

James Freeman at the WSJ asks the right questions about the Bear Stearns crisis a year ago...

Over at this bloggingheads conversation with Arnold Klings, some commenters thought we weren't fair to Keynes...

China is worried:...

Dan Klein, of George Mason University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts on truth in economics, bias, and groupthink in academic life...

About half of the return to a college education over and above that of a high school education, is eaten up by higher costs of living—college grads tend to live in high wage but high cost urban areas...

Will the President's budget pass?...

Some conservative critics of the Obama administration are using a Cold War era taunt to describe the new White House agenda: "socialism"...

As millions of Americans lose their jobs and their homes, Americans may well be losing confidence in the American Dream...

Here is Krugman on the state of the economy and Obama's policies:...

One of the depressing parts of the New Deal was its willingness to help big labor and big business, a classic case of the seen and the unseen...

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the birth and growth of Wikipedia...

We're going to run out of money...

Arnold Kling and I talk about the state of economics and the current crisis...

This New York Times story suggests that Fannie and Freddie are going to stay in the hands of the government, partly because government likes have the tool...

One of the arguments against decentralized decision-making is that it's too selfish...

Todd Zywicki, of George Mason University Law School, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the evolving world of consumer debt and how institutions and public policy have influenced consumer access to debt and credit...

So starting in 2011, Obama is proposing a trillion dollars in new taxes...

Obama has promised that the bottom 98% of taxpayers will not pay a dime in higher taxes for the new spending he has planned...

What was in last night's state of the union address?...

The so-called Employee Free Choice Act (George Orwell call your office) would end secret ballots in union voting making it easier for unions to organize...

Every President promises to root it out:...

I just heard Obama guarantee that no one making less than $250,000 a year will pay a dime in higher taxes for the budgets he is proposing...

Allan Meltzer, of Carnegie Mellon University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the current state of monetary policy and the potential for inflation...

Ed Glaeser writes: To give Fannie and Freddie more resources, the government is infusing them with $200 billion...

President Obama will shortly sign legislation creating nearly a trillion dollars of deficit spending in the name of stimulating the economy...

Amar Bhidé, of Columbia University and author of The Venturesome Economy, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role of entrepreneurship and innovation in a global economy...

Greg Mankiw notes that deflation worries have subsided and points to this chart showing that inflation-adjusted Treasuries (blue line) no longer have a higher yield (anticipating deflation) than unadjusted Treasuries:...

The AP reports (HT: Drudge): President Barack Obama says Caterpillar's chief executive has told him the company will rehire some laid-off workers if the stimulus bill passes...

The new bailout plan was announced at 11 am:

Eric Boehlert wonders: Does CNN's John King think construction work is done pro bono?...

One of our biggest challenges as human beings is adjusting our expectations when a trend reverses...

Daron Acemoglu, of MIT, talks with EconTalk Russ Roberts about the financial crisis and the lessons that need to be learned from the crisis...

Michael Smith comments over at EconTalk on a comment by one Mark K:...

John Cochrane, of the University of Chicago, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the financial crisis...

Buy American!...

Greg Mankiw gives this wise response to Robert Shiller's observation that confidence is the key to economic recovery:...

EconTalk host Russ Roberts talks about the role of empirical evidence and bias in economics and why economists disagree...

This post discusses a study that claims that of the three year increase in life expectancy from 1978-2001, five months of the increase came from cleaner air, vindicating the investments made in making the air cleaner...

Casey Mulligan argues that what government spends the money on does matter...

Shocking...

The AP reports: Cleaner air over the past two decades has added nearly five months to average life expectancy in the United States, according to a federally funded study...

It's here where you'll also find it in PDF form if you'd like...

Soerson writes in the comments to an earlier post: Such an effort is hardly new...

I recently finished Krugman's The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008...

In separate interviews at All Things Considered, Krugman and I disagree on the stimulus plan...

Life is tough, isn't it?...

I suggested in this All Things Considered interview that not all infrastructure yields a positive benefit...

My mood is perfectly captured by David Harsanyi...

When I suggest that the $825 billion pork package might not stimulate the economy, the next question is always the same: so what would you do to stimulate the economy?...

Investor's Chronicle asked me for 350 words on whether Obama can lead the US out of recession...

I was just talking with Pietro Poggi-Corradini about how we might keep tabs on what actually happens rather than on what is supposed to happen when the government spends $825 billion quickly...

From the AP: It will take years before an infrastructure spending program proposed by President-elect Barack Obama will boost the economy, according to congressional economists...

Pretty cool response, folks, to this post...

The New York Times reports: Two weeks after closing its purchase of Merrill Lynch at the urging of federal regulators, the government cemented a deal at midnight Thursday to supply Bank of America with a fresh $20 billion capital injection and absorb as much as $98.2 billion in losses on toxic assets, according to people involved in the transaction...

The general reaction to the incoming administration reminds me of the book of Samuel when the people of Israel ask for a king...

Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in the book--why open source software development has been so successful, the culture of open source, under what conditions open source is likely to thrive and not to thrive, and the Hayekian nature of the open source process...

In this post, I speculated that many (most) Americans were skeptical of the stimulus package...

In a comment to this earlier post, Charlie writes: For all of Russ's doom and gloom, I would love to see some actual predictions, something specific and on record...

Arnold asks the right question...

I have started asking people I encounter whether they think government spending a trillion or so extra dollars is going to be good for the economy...

The side arguing that reductions in CO2 aren't worth it, lost the debate...

Steve Fazzari, of Washington University in St. Louis, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Keynesian economics...

Commenter Russ Wood writes, in response to a previous encouragement to vote for EconTalk in the 2008 Weblog Awards: From an economic standpoint, why should I vote?...

The first ten minutes of this Planet Money podcast I talk about what it was like to have Obama on the GMU campus proposing to spend a lot of my money and yours...

A reminder to please vote for EconTalk at the Weblog Awards...

The Price of Everything is now available on the Kindle...

As I type these words, President-elect Obama is here on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University giving a major economics address...

Arnold Kling channels Hayek on the stimulus plan...

Obama is aware that a few people might be skeptical of the government's ability to spend 500 or so billion dollars quickly and wisely...

Robert Reich in our conversation yesterday about the proposed Obama stimulus plan was eager to point out that while he supports the stimulus, it's important that the plan not have any pork in it...

Have you voted for EconTalk today?...

Here are three $750 billion stimulus plans...

The Washington Post reports: The government's billion-dollar program to help people prepare for the transition to digital television has run out of money, potentially leaving millions of viewers without coupons to buy converter boxes they need to keep their analog TV sets working after the switch...

If the government cuts rates or just gives rebates but at the same time increases the size of government, taxes are not lower...

Robert Reich sings the virtues of the Obama stimulus plan on NPR's Talk of the Nation...

EconTalk is once again a finalist for Best Podcast in the 2008 Weblog Awards...

Rod Blagojevich will probably go to jail for trying to sell a Senate seat and various other shenanigans...

Peter Boettke, of George Mason University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Austrian perspective on business cycles, monetary policy and the current state of the economy...

Obama plans to have tax cuts in his stimulus package: Aiming to foster bipartisan support for his record-setting economic stimulus, President-elect Obama plans to propose huge tax cuts for businesses and middle-class workers that will total about 40 percent of the package, or up to $310 billion, congressional officials said...

This video from 1933 touts the virtues of inflation for ending the Great Depression...

Robert Higgs, of the Independent Institute, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the effect of World War II on the American economy...

Here is a 35 minute video from a Canadian TV show, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, discussing the New Deal and the Great Depression...

Two quotes for would-be car czars and other experts to remember...

Superb...

Steven Lipstein, President and CEO of BJC HealthCare--a billion hospital system in St. Louis, Missouri--talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of hospitals...

As we prepare to partially nationalize the American automobile industry, it is a good time to remember that George Bush is not a free market ideologue and that he did not pursue free market policies...

It's funny, even though it's tragic...

The criminal complaint against Blagojevich is here...

I happened to be in Chicago the day after the election and riding in a taxi, overheard a caller to a talk show talking about how wonderful it would be to have both Congress and the Presidency controlled by the Democrats...

The auto bailout has gone from tragedy to farce...

This paper by Baily, Litan, and Johnson is the best overview I've read so far of what went wrong in the housing and financial markets (HT: Arnold)...

Austin, in a comment, asks for a list of my favorite movies...

This (HT: Drudge) is supposed to be serious rather than funny...

If you have to choose between irrationality and reason, it is easy to choose reason...

I just finished an interview with Robert Higgs about the Great Depression for a future EconTalk...

Here on audio or video is the talk I gave yesterday at the Cato Institute on The Price of Everything...

Saw it this weekend...

Winston Churchill is supposed to have said about Clement Atlee that "he was a modest man, but then again, he has much to be modest about."...

Tyler at MR quotes a speech about the beginning of the FDIC, that alleges that FDR was opposed to federal deposit insurance on moral hazard grounds...

The latest episode of EconTalk is Eric Rauchway talking about the New Deal and the Great Depression...

Here's an interview with me about The Price of Everything from the Logic Consortium...

We can all stop tiptoeing around the "R" word...

Just a reminder that I'm speaking today (Monday), at noon at the Cato Institute, followed by lunch and a book signing...

John Cassidy does a nice job summarizing how we get here with a focus on Bernanke and the evolution of his view of the Fed...

On December 1 at noon, I'll be speaking on The Price of Everything at Cato here in DC, with comments by Nick Gillespie...

Thomas Hazlett of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about a number of key issues in telecommunications and telecommunication policy including net neutrality, FCC policy, and the state of antitrust...

In two recent posts, I talked about the enormous variation across locations in the proportion of houses in a location with negative equity along with how myopic many of us were about the fragility of the housing market and the potential for meltdown...

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in a post-mortem on the election, (HT: Zev) concedes that McCain's biggest mistake was supporting the bailout...

The Senate and the Washington Post use "quickly" differently than I do...

Brad DeLong quotes commenter Steve Benen...

Paulson has decided not to tap the second half of the $700 billion TARP...

Obama talks about working with John McCain...

Reader Tim Allen asks a very good question...

I collect my essays and other writings at InvisibleHeart.com...

Alex (and others) have been debating whether there's a credit crunch...

Here is my commentary at NPR.org on Paulson's latest fiddling while financial markets burn...

She channels Bastiat and reminds us all of the power of remembering opportunity cost...

Why is so much of the subprime mess concentrated in California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida?...

Seanooski comments...

Bryan Caplan lists the 21 things Herbert Hoover mentioned in a 1932 speech just before the election that Hoover claimed help save the economy...

Fannie and Freddie...

Arnold Kling of EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role of credit default swaps and counterparty risks in the current financial mess...

We're hearing a lot of talk of how crucial the auto industry is for the country...

The latest EconTalk is Richard Epstein talking about happiness...

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the relationship between happiness and wealth, the effects of inequality on happiness, and the economics of envy and altruism...

Russell Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason University, sits down with Reason.tv to discuss his latest book, The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity...

Bob Higgs claims that "regime uncertainty," the uncertainty about the rules of the game, is what made the New Deal so ineffective...

f you are a teacher using EconTalk in the classroom, I would love to hear from you about how you use it and its effectiveness...

The lastest EconTalk is Mike Munger talking about middlemen...

Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the often-vilified middleman--someone who buys cheap, sells dear and does nothing to improve the product...

I fear it is just the beginning...

Alan Greenspan has been forced to admit the heresy of his youth...

I'll be debating Bill McKibben on the virtues or lack thereof of "buying local." ...

Russell Roberts is pretty good at spreading free-market economic ideas into places where they might not ordinarily be appreciated -- namely, National Public Radio and the op-ed pages of The New York Times...

Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, talks about the economics of organizations with EconTalk host Russ Roberts...

With financial markets in tatters and the housing market in shreds, it is popular to claim that it's all the fault of Reagan-era deregulation...

Everyone has their own least favorite Krugman quote...

The latest episode of EconTalk is a conversation with Patri Friedman on seasteading, the creation of autonomous private places to live on the ocean...

You know that things aren't going well when the vertical axis for the stock market chart on the front page of the New York Times web page is measured in percent instead of hundreds of points...

Did you know that states have housing finance agencies to promote affordable housing, too? ...

I'm thinking of not voting this year...

A nice piece by William Easterly in the WSJ on what poor nations learned from the myth of the Great Depression...

William Bernstein, author of A Splendid Exchange, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about inequality...

Here is my piece in the WSJ on government's role in the mess...

This (HT: John Lott and Drudge) is almost as scary as the bailout...

In this post, I provided excerpts from an article describing how Congress had leaned on Fannie Mae to encourage loans for mobile homes, known in the industry as manufactured homes...

Arnold Kling of EconLog talks with host Russ Roberts about the economics of the housing market with a focus on the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...

In Ed Gramlich's book on the subprime market, he mentions almost in passing that HUD even required Fannie and Freddie to support the purchases of mobile homes, what are formally called "manufactured homes."...

The White House is trying to argue that the bailout isn't so bad, it might not really cost $700 billion because some of the assets will appreciate in value...

As Fed and Treasury officials scramble to secure a $700 billion rescue for faltering financial institutions, economists are pointing fingers of blame at just about everyone: lenders, bankers and borrowers...

Russell Roberts, a professor of economics at George Mason University, writes in one of the more intriguing genres we’ve come across lately: that of the economic novel, or the economic romance, as his books have been described by his publishers...

John McCain on 60 Minutes suggested Andrew Cuomo as the person he would put in charge of the SEC...

I have mentioned the argument of Robert Shiller's that the housing boom of the last ten years was a bubble, a result of social contagion...

From the AP (HT: Drudge): Congress is poised to vote on the biggest government intervention in the financial markets since the Great Depression, but it’s unlikely that any of the three senators vying for the White House will be there – even though all three have talked of little else for over a week...

Back in July, as Fannie and Freddie were starting to implode, Krugman concluded that Fannie and Freddie weren't part of the subprime crisis:...

In a recent comment, TopCat asks:...

Mark Thoma explains why the CRA is not the cause of the current crisis...

From Christian Broda, here is what a map of the states would look like if each state were a country with the same sized economy:...

Last week's EconTalk episode was with Robert Shiller...

The Community Reinvestment Act was signed by Carter in 1977...

Karol Boudreaux, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about wildlife management in Africa...

Starting in 1997, Clinton's head of HUD aggressively pushed the GSEs to subsidize the subprime market...

I keep hearing that the subprime crisis was caused by people willing to buy stuff they couldn't evaluate...

Some people are misinterpreting my goal in my set of posts today in the new "Government intervention in housing" category...

Arnold Kling at EconLog:...

For me, this video captures much of what is wrong with the political process in America...

A reader commented asking if there was anything in The Price of Everything about buying books on Ebay...

The Knoxville News Sentinel is reporting severe gasoline shortages (HT: Instapundit):...

Robert Shiller of Yale University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the current housing mess and related financial market problems...

Russell Roberts, author, Hoover Institution, "The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity," re the credit crisis, the Detroit failures, the Lehman Brothers moral hazard...

Somebody asked me the other day—whose fault is it that Freddie and Fannie are on the ropes?...

Following its knee-jerk, free-market, Milton Friedman obsessed ideology, the Bush Administration has seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...

More free market theology from the Bush administration...

This article by Robert Solow is ostensibly a review of a book by Kevin Phillips...

Muirgeo, in a comment to this post, writes:...

Here is Arnold writing very lucidly on the situation...

Joseph Ellis, of Mt. Holyoke College and author of American Creation, talks about the triumphs and tragedies of the founding of the United States...

When I first took economics, I learned from my textbook (Samuelson) the fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc...

Robert Samuelson does a nice job explaining why living standards are rising even though we sometimes hear otherwise:...

Usually totalitarian regimes lop off heads, but Iran is considering lopping off zeros (HT: Ewin Barnett):...

I'm sure Joe Biden's acceptance speech was worded carefully:...

Chapter Two of The Price of Everything is now available: HTML and PDF...

Charlie, in the comments to this post, refers to a post by Justin Wolfers (who was guest blogging at MR) on the supposed divorce myth...

In this earlier post, I challenged readers to challenge this chart:...

Jonathan Rauch, of the Brookings Institution and the Atlantic Monthly, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the evolution of the Chevy Volt, GM's planned electric car...

Over the years I have come to appreciate the depth of Hayek's insights, particularly in "The Use of Knowledge in Society," his 1945 American Economic Review paper...

Technique fascinates me...

Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk and author of the economics novel, The Price of Everything, talks with guest host Arnold Kling about the ideas in The Price of Everything: price gouging, the role of prices in the aftermath of natural disaster, spontaneous order, and the hidden harmony of the economic cosmos...

After mentioning Michael Phelps's success, Rich writes:...

The price of regular unleaded is falling about a penny a day...

A number of people have asked about whether The Price of Everything will be on the Kindle...

It is a crime to profit from helping others...

Recently, Don welcomed Muirgeo back to the comments section of the blog and I noticed a mere 242 comments were made in response...

I have now read five entire books on the Kindle—The Other, Anna Karenina, SuperCapitalism, My Sister's Keeper, and Complications—a mix of short fiction, long (OK, very long) fiction, and nonfiction...

The first chapter of The Price of Everything is now available online here in HTML or here in PDF...

John Taylor of Stanford University talks about the Taylor Rule, his description of what the Fed ought to do and what it sometimes actually does, to keep inflation in check and the economy on a steady path...

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of Stanford University's Hoover Institution and New York University talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about threats to U.S. security, particularly Iran...

Just wanted to let Cafe patrons know that my new book, The Price of Everything, will be shipping later this week from Amazon...

Steve Chapman writes eloquently on what are called consent searches:...

Robert Barro of Harvard University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks about disasters--significant national and international catastrophes such as the Great Depression, war, and the flu epidemic in the early part of the 20th century...

Jonathan Rauch profiles the Volt, GM's electric car...

Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist and University of California at Berkeley professor, talks with Russ Roberts about Google, the role of technology in our everyday lives, the unintended paths of innovation, and the value of economics...

Both Bryan Caplan and David Friedman think the purpose of boarding pass numbers is to get the people on the plane more quickly...

One of the deepest insights of Coase's 1960 article on externalities is the understanding that externalities are reciprocal and that rules and norms affect how much care people take in a risky situation when they are linked to others...

Arnold writes: Russ Roberts' not-yet-released novel The Price of Everything starts out by making the economic case for the snow shovel pricing mechanism...

From the Tax Foundation: The latest release of Internal Revenue Service data on individual income taxes comes from calendar year 2006, a year in which the economy remained healthy and continued to grow, increasing individual income tax collections along with overall average effective tax rates...

Are our brains being affected by technology?...

Doug Rivers of Stanford University and YouGov.com talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the world of political polling...

I saw The Visitor last night, the story of an economics professor who gets entangled with a couple of illegal immigrants and whose life changes because of his relationships with them...

I recently saw Joseph Ellis speak on the founding...

Capitalism is dead...

Eric Hanushek of Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the strange evolution of school finance in the last four decades...

This email arrived in my inbox this morning from United Airlines:...

Here is a superb post on the Orwellian idea of compulsory volunteering...

Justin Bowen comments at EconTalk and points readers to an analysis of special education showing the power of incentives...

During Passover, traditional Jews from Eastern Europe have a custom of avoiding corn along with flour and bread and other forbidden foods...

The latest episode of EconTalk is a conversation with Mike Munger about what happened in Santiago when the private bus system was replaced with a public system promising a more equitable and efficient system...

Just finished my first book on the Kindle—The Other, by David Guterson—and thought I'd share a few more thoughts on the Kindle experience...

Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Munger's recent trip to Chile and the changes Chile has made to Santiago's bus system...

The latest episode of EconTalk is a conversation with Arnold Kling on how to improve health care outcomes in hospitals...

I broke down and bought a Kindle...

Arnold Kling EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the death of his father and the lessons to be learned for how hospitals treat patients and our health care system treats hospitals...

Richard McKenzie of the University California, Irvine and the author of Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies and Other Pricing Puzzles, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about a wide range of pricing puzzles...

This is an amazing 18 minute talk by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor talking about the stroke she had...

Dew-Becker and Gordon write (HT: Arnold Kling):...

In this earlier post, I wrote asked why live theater is so much more effective than filmed theater...

My new book, The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity, is a novel that tries to help the reader understand a bunch of related topics--the role of prices in steering resources, the role of prices in creating innovation, the role of prices in letting us weave our own dreams of what we want to buy and how we want to spend our lives...

Don Boudreaux of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the recent surge in energy prices...

I was in New York the other day and had the chance to see Curtains...

Anytime you hear people talking about how dangerous and polluted and horrible life is in the United States, remind them of this:...

Steve Cole, the Sales Manager at Ourisman Honda of Laurel in Laurel, Maryland talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the strange world of new car pricing...

Gene Epstein, Barron's economics editor, talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the virtues of the gold standard relative to fiat money...

In my recent podcast with Robin Hanson, he mentioned a Paul Graham essay, "Lies We Tell Kids."...

In the most recent New York Times Sunday Book Review, Dongping Han, a teacher of history and political science at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, had a letter defending the Cultural Revolution:...

Robin Hanson of George Mason University talks about the phenomenon of signalling--the ways people spend resources to convey information about ourselves to others...

Steve Mufson at the Washington Post is bewitched, bothered, and bewildered about why oil prices keep rising...

My new book, The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity is now available for pre-order at Amazon for the lovely low price of $16.47 in hardcover...

Economists usually argue that as oil gets more expensive, there is an incentive to discover new technologies and to switch to existing technologies that are only financially viable when oil prices rise...

The National Post editorializes (HT: Nathaniel Clarkson) on the moral high ground being claimed by the Democratic Party's plans for their August convention in Denver:...

My wife recently took our 13 year-old son to the doctor for his annual checkup...

The Boston Globe reports (HT: Greg Mankiw) that politicians in Massachusetts have proposed a 2.5% tax on university endowments that exceed $1 billion...

Allan Meltzer of Carnegie Mellon University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about what the Fed really does and the political pressures facing the Chair of the Fed...

Chris Anderson talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his next book project based on the idea that many delightful things in the world are increasingly free--internet-based email with infinite storage, on-line encyclopedias and even podcasts, to name just a few...

Here is Adam Smith on the human capacity for selfishness and for something that goes beyond selfishness:...

John Nye of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, War, Wine, and Taxes...

Early this morning, I turned my radio on and heard the very end of an interview on talk radio...

William Bernstein talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the history of trade...

Evidently, smoking, obesity and diabetes are bad for your health...

As I have written here before, looking at slices of the population over time is a very misleading indicator of what happens to particular families over time, particularly when family composition is changing...

EconTalk host Russ Roberts talks about the claim that for capitalism to succeed there have to be people at the bottom to do the unpleasant tasks and that the rich thrive because of the suffering of those at the bottom...

Diane Coyle talks about her book, The Soulful Science, in the latest episode of EconTalk...

Diane Coyle talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in her new book, The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why it Matters...

Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post wants America's trade policy to help Americans...

The Washington Times recently published this letter by William Hawkins...

Sometimes I get depressed about the quality of statistical work in economics...

Last night, Hillary Clinton was on the Tonight Show and she gave a phenomenal example of the power of economics...

Christopher Coyne of West Virginia University and George Mason University's Mercatus Center talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy...

As the aftermath of the Iraq war continues to be chaotic, there is a tendency to hope that this is just a passing phase and that time and action, such as the surge, will lead to better outcomes in the future...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Deirdre McCloskey on capitalism, community, the virtues, agricultural romance, religion and a few other topics along the way...

Deirdre McCloskey of the University of Illinois at Chicago and the author of The Bourgeois Virtues talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about capitalism and whether markets make people more ethical or less....

Here is my piece on the Bear Stearns debacle that aired on NPR's All Things Considered....

You know how politicians are--always looking out for the little guy....

Mike Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of subsidies....

As is often the case, the glass is half-empty over at the Washington Post....

Tyler Cowen of George Mason University and Marginal Revolution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about money, inflation, the Federal Reserve and the gold standard...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Tyler Cowen on money...

I was asked the other day by a reporter if NAFTA had been a good thing or a bad thing for America. I said that both the proponents and opponents of NAFTA had no legitimate, unassailable or even suggestive, statistical evidence on their side...

The latest EconTalk is Stephen Marglin talking about his new book, The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community...

Stephen Marglin of Harvard University and author of The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the markets and community...

Martin Brock, in response to this post, writes...

Spencer suggests in a recent comment that no one is really claiming that middle class incomes are stagnant and to dispute this claim is to attack a straw man...

In this post, I showed that net worth per household had risen dramatically in recent years...

The latest EconTalk features Thomas Sowell talking about his new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies...

Thomas Sowell of Stanford University's Hoover Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his new book, Economic Facts and Fallacies...

Commentator Russell Roberts says we all have a yearning for a candidate with principles and ideals...

One comment on this post about the state of America mentioned our rising debt, negative savings and so on...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Timothy Brook, author of Vermeer's Hat, a lovely book that looks at the dawn of globalization in the 17th century by examining Vermeer's paintings and other bits of Dutch culture...

Harold Meyerson thinks we've become a nation of shoppers rather than a nation of producers...

Timothy Brook, professor of history at the University of British Columbia and author of Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the expansion of global trade between Europe and the rest of the world, and in particular, North American and China...

Arnold at EconLog has a very nice post on the environmental impact of dogs...

William Easterly of NYU talks about why some nations escape poverty while others do not, why aid almost always fails to create growth, and what can realistically be done to help the poorest people in the world...

The latest EconTalk is here—William Easterly talking about the ideas in his two books, The Elusive Quest for Growth and The White Man's Burden...

Here is a very nice video from Reason.TV of Drew Carey talking about how the middle class actually is alive and well...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with my colleague Dan Klein on the economics of coordination—how markets connect people around the world doing various parts of a task that get combined into a finished product without any of the people contributing the task necessarily knowing that they're working together...

Dan Klein of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the marvel of economic coordination that takes place without a coordinator--the sequence of complex tasks done by individuals often separated by immense distances who unknowingly contribute to everyday products and services we enjoy...

Arnold Kling over at EconLog tells the poignant story of worrying about his father's health care...

Bill Clinton is considered a policy wonk, the guy who really understands the details of public policy...

I debated an economist the other day on the stimulus package..

Which of these stories is right?

Here's a statistical analysis of the career of Roger Clemens, purporting to show that his career trajectory is similar to that of Randy Johnson, Curt Shilling and Nolan Ryan, three people who presumably did not take steroids...

Paul Collier of Oxford University talks about the ideas in his recent book, The Bottom Billion, an analysis of why the poorest countries in the world fail to grow...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Paul Collier about the ideas in his book, The Bottom Billion...

Alex at Marginal Revolution has some interesting things to say on unintended consequences...

Some people seem to have misunderstood the point about this post on minimum wages...

Here is federal tax revenue collected from the income tax on individuals from 2000-2006, reported by the CBO (Tab #3), measured in billions of dollars...

This week's podcast is with Don Boudreaux, my co-host here at the Cafe and the author of Globalization, a superb primer on trade policy and the phenomenon of globalization...

After my commentary on NPR, I spent a lot of time last week talking to bright non-economists about the various proposals to stimulate the economy by giving people money...

Don Boudreaux, of George Mason University, talks about the ideas in his book, Globalization...

Here is my commentary from NPR's All Things Considered on why a stimulus package is unlikely to stimulate...

Here is Harold Meyerson in the Washington Post, singing the same old false song (HT: Co-host Don Boudreaux)...

Here is the latest EconTalk, Mike Munger talking about the Coase and transaction costs and the nature of the firm...

Mike Munger, of Duke University, talks about why firms exist...

Many of us have jobs that allow us to take our leisure on the job throughout the day and at our own discretion...

I have believed for a while now that an important reason that suburban public schools outperform urban public schools is that suburban public schools have to keep the parents happier because of the competition from private schools...

Since interviewing Edward Castronova, I've continued thinking about how prominent these virtual playgrounds are going to be in our lives...

The latest EconTalk is Edward Castronova talking about his new book, Exodus to the Virtual World...

Edward Castronova, of Indiana University and author of Exodus to the Virtual World, talks about his provocative thesis that a growing number of people around the world will be spending more and more time playing multiplayer games in virtual reality both as a form of escape and as a search for meaning...

Even government is getting better all the time...

Let's see who gets the closest (from Real Clear Politics)..

If you live in New Hampshire, why should the failure of your favorite candidate for President to meet expectations in Iowa change your vote?

Here from the Washington Post are just a few of the ways people are going to die because of global warming...

Paul Krugman thinks that Obama's naive in thinking that he can change the country by being more congenial...

The latest episode of EconTalk is Karol Boudreaux talking about the effects of letting people own things--giving coffee bean growers in Rwanda more freedom to do what they want with their beans and letting people in South Africa own their own houses...

Karol Boudreaux, Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her field work and research in Rwanda and South Africa...

The uproar this morning is that Roger Clemens, someone who everyone agrees is one of the best pitchers of all time, is a cheater, a steroids user going back to 1998...

We've all been frustrated at times by the weird problem of having checked "Remember Personal Info" on the comment form and finding that when we go to comment again, it's all blank...

The latest EconTalk features Pete Boettke talking about what makes Austrian economics both different and useful...

One more way the world is getting better (the Oregonian reports)...

Pete Boettke, of George Mason University, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the origins and tenets of Austrian economics...

In this recent essay, I discuss how politicians are driven by incentives rather than ideology or party...

My next book, The Price of Everything, is about the transformation of our standard of living and wealth creation...

Mike Munger, frequent guest and longtime Econlib contributor, speaks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about fair trade coffee and free trade agreements...

I'm having a little trouble figuring out what to say about this story...

Here's the latest EconTalk: Mike Munger and I talk about fair trade coffee and free-trade agreements...

Joan Robinson once said (anyone out there have a source?), just because your neighbor puts rocks in his harbors to keep out your boats, that doesn't mean it makes sense for you to do the same...

Six hundred things and counting...

Daniel Botkin, ecologist and author, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about how we think about our role as humans in the natural world, the dynamic nature of environmental reality and the implications for how we react to global warming...

The latest episode of EconTalk is a conversation with Daniel Botkin...

Buyer beware, even when the item is only truth and the price is zero...

More data from the American Housing Survey...

In this bonus middle-of-the-week podcast, Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about health care costs...

Here's a midweek bonus podcast on the issue of health care costs that came up recently at EconTalk and here at Cafe Hayek...

Joel Waldfogel of the Wharton School of Business talks about the idea in his new book, The Tyranny of Markets: Why You Can't Always Get What You Want...

Here's my attempt in about 1000 words to explain the relative importance of imports and exports and the total unimportance of the trade deficit...

For Joel Waldfogel, the glass always seems to be half-empty...

I get it...

This post has created some interesting discussion in the comments...

Here is Cass Sunstein in his new book, Worst-Case Scenarios, talking about how we should take into account the well-being of future generations...

I really dislike the phrase "giving back..."

An edited transcript of my podcast with Paul Romer is now up at the Library of Economics and Liberty...

If the government paid for everybody's health care, some argue that we'd save money by cutting out administrative costs...

Proponents of a single-payer system in health care argue that it would save costs because of lower industry profits and lower administrative costs...

Arnold Kling of EconLog talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the economics of health care and his book, A Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care...

This week's EconTalk is with Arnold Kling talking about health care...

EconTalk has been nominated for best podcast as part of the 2007 Weblog Awards...

EconTalk has been nominated for best podcast in the 2007 Weblog Awards...

Robin Hanson continues to give me a hard time...

Colleague Robin Hanson gives me a hard time over at Overcoming Bias (reacting to this earlier post)...

Bruce Yandle of Clemson University and George Mason University's Mercatus Center looks at the tragedy of the commons and the various ways that people have avoided the overuse of resources that are held in common...

Here is Bruce Yandle talking about the tragedy of the commons and the evolution of regulation of the environment...

EconTalk listeners and others will enjoy this profile of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita...

In 1970, according to the American Housing Survey, 36% of the 67 million households in America had air conditioning, 11% had central air. This is the earliest data available from this survey...

In honor of Don's superb description of the politician's daily tribulations, and in honor of the start of the World Series, here are two recent examples of political bufoonery followed by a classic...

At the University of Chicago, where I went to graduate school, a quote from Lord Kelvin, was carved in stone at the Social Sciences Research Building: When you cannot measure...your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory...

Ian Ayres of Yale University Law School talks about the ideas in his new book, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart...

I'm a lifelong Red Sox fan and I thoroughly enjoyed last night's victory over the Indians...

From George Will's latest column...

The data are in...

James Pethokoukis calls it Al Gore's $307 Trillion Gamble, pointing out the costs of actions and the benefits of inaction on global warming...

Al Gore winning the Nobel Prize has caused some folks to speak out against the religious component of global warming...

Thomas Friedman makes the case for the virtues of Al Gore's leadership relative to George Bush's...

In the latest EconTalk, I talk with Robert Frank about the virtues of learning economics via puzzles and stories rather than graphs and equations...

Author Robert Frank of Cornell University talks about economic education and his recent book, The Economic Naturalist...

In this recent post, I predicted that Rudy Giuliani would get the Republican nomination and that barring dramatic changes in the economic landscape or the war in Iraq, he would defeat Hillary if she gets the nomination...

In the last 45 years, there has been one charismatic Republican presidential nominee...

Thomas McCraw of Harvard University talks about the ideas of Joseph Schumpeter from his book, Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Thomas McCraw about the life and ideas of Schumpeter based on his recent bio of the man...

The transition from communism to freedom has been disappointing in many ways...

Here is the latest EconTalk—Don Boudreaux makes the case for getting rid of antitrust laws...

Don Boudreaux of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about when market failure can be improved by government intervention...

Check out this chart (HT: The Big Picture)...

In this podcast with Mike Munger, we talk about "getting the prices right" when choosing between recycling and throwing stuff away, whether it's a good idea to buy local for environmental reasons, peak oil, slow food, and steroids...

Mike Munger, of Duke University, and EconTalk host Russ Roberts clean up some loose ends from their previous conversation on recycling, move on to talk about the idea of buying local to reduce one's carbon footprint and then talk about the idea of peak oil...

I'm fifty pages into Prophet of Innovation, the bio of Schumpeter by Thomas McCraw, preparing for a podcast with McCraw...

If you want to know what's wrong with economics education in America, go here...

Lior Strahilevitz has an interesting comment on the recent Epstein podcast...

Paul Boyer of the Mad Money Machine interviewed me for his podcast...

An interview with the host of my favorite podcast: Russ Roberts of EconTalk available in iTunes and at EconTalk.org...

The latest EconTalk is Richard Epstein talking about zoning and Kelo...

Rick Ankiel of the St. Louis Cardinals — a pitcher who became a slugging outfielder after a long stint in the minors — has admitted taking human growth hormone during his uphill comeback...

Richard Epstein, of the University of Chicago and Stanford's Hoover Institution, makes the case that many current zoning restrictions are essentially "takings" and property owners should receive compensation for the last value of their land...

Here's the stat of the week (from this WSJ article on the auto industry): UAW membership is only 190,000 workers...

I spoke too soon...

In my book, The Choice, I tell the story of a fictional small town and how it is affected by international trade...

Tyler and I discuss your inner economist...

Tyler Cowen, of George Mason University, talks about his new book, Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist...

The iPod will be six years old next month...

Robert Samuelson points out wisely that the measured poverty rate is a misleading measure of economic progress when there is immigration (a common theme here at the Cafe)...

Interesting piece in the NYT on the bang for the buck that comes from the deductibility of charity...

The U.S. military is giving away soccer balls in Fallujah trying to buy love...

Thirteen years after NAFTA passed, the US is finally going to comply with the provision to allow Mexican truckers into the United States...

George Shultz, the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role of economics in his career, the tension between morality and pragmatism in foreign policy, and the role of personalities and economics in diplomacy, particularly in US/Soviet relations in the 1980s...

This week's EconTalk is an interview with George Shultz...

In this post on energy policy, I wrote about what economists' role as policy advocates...

Two wonderful posts by Brad DeLong, (here and here) on the economic changes of the last century...

Freeman Dyson joins the ranks of those who are skeptical about the global warming "crisis" (HT to Arnold at EconLog)...

The latest podcast at EconTalk is Paul Romer on growth...

In a comment on a recent post of Don's about Cape Cod, Spencer asks about my prediction about Cape Cod traffic...

Paul Romer, Stanford University professor and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about growth, China, innovation, and the role of human capital...

Barry Weingast, Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and the Ward C. Krebs Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University, talks about the ideas in his forthcoming book with Doug North and John Wallis, A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History...

This week's EconTalk podcast is with Rick Hanushek...

Here is a very nice essay by GMU student Geoffrey Lea on Hayek's argument that we need to behave differently when we interact with friends and family compared to the strangers we meet in the extended order of market transactions...

Here is Jeff Jacoby on the decline of anti-scalping legislation and why it's a good thing...

Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek talks about his research on the impact of educational quality on economic growth...

I learned a lot from all the comments and suggestions I've received about the title for my next book...

I want to thank everyone who commented on the recent post asking for reactions to potential titles for my next book...

I'm finishing up my next book and I'm struggling with the title...

Opera is somehow thriving in culturally backward America (HT: Maggie's Farm)...

In the latest EconTalk, I talk with David Henderson about whether it's reasonable to presume that economists agree on various issues such as the minimum wage, trade, the causes of growth or the sources of inflation...

David Henderson, editor of the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics and a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about when and why economists disagree...

Gina Kolata writes on the front page of the New York Times...

This week's EconTalk features Bruce Bueno de Mesquita discussing his latest book, The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin...

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, professor at NYU, talks about the political economy of political campaigns and his forthcoming book, The Strategy of Campaigning: Lessons from Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin...

David Brooks summarizes ($) President Bush's view of politics and history...

Russell Roberts speaks on Robert Frost and the Chinese Economy: Is Chinese Growth Good for the United States?

David Brooks summarizes ($) President Bush's view of politics and history...

The latest EconTalk is a bit off the beaten track....

In the latest EconTalk episode, I talk with Ed Leamer about outsourcing, globalization and a host of related issues...

Here is some wisdom from John Baden occasioned by the 4th of July...

My next EconTalk guest will be Ed Leamer...

In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs (HT: Fabian Franco and Nathaniel Clarkson), Kenneth Scheve and Matthew Slaughter argue that we need a New Deal for globalization...

The latest EconTalk podcast is with David Weinberger talking about the ideas in his book, Everything is Miscellaneous...

Tyler, writing in the New York Times, finds a silver lining in America's mediocre education system and makes some interesting observations about teenagers and entrepreneurship...

Monday's EconTalk podcast will be with David Weinberger who has many interesting things to say about the way we use the web to organize information, based on his book, Everything is Miscellaneous...

I just interviewed Bryan Caplan on his new book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, for an upcoming EconTalk podcast...

Opponents of immigration keep mentioning the illegality of some immigrants as if that issue were decisive...

In the latest EconTalk episode, I talk with Dan Pink about the ideas in his book, A Whole New Mind...

According to the White House, the new immigration bill will "Help Keep The U.S. Competitive In The Global Economy By Establishing A New Merit-Based System For Immigration That Is Similar To Those Used By Other Countries..."

I went to the Nationals baseball game last night and was surprised to discover that when you buy a bottle of Pepsi, the concession stand person removes the top before letting you walk away...

I'm reading Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, scheduled for an upcoming podcast...

Brad DeLong has an interesting post at TPM Cafe (HT: Arnold Kling at EconLog)...

Whenever I teach microeconomics I spend about 40% of the class on supply and demand...

My three sons, ages seven to twelve, suffer from a chronic condition I've heard described by economist John Baden as ironitis—the love of anything made of metal..

In an earlier post, I challenged readers to discuss the trans-fat ban by Montgomery County...

The latest episode of EconTalk is Amity Shlaes talking about her new book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression...

The BBC reports on the outcry over a reality show where a terminally ill patient will decide who gets one of her kidneys...

This week's EconTalk podcast is with Robin Hanson...

Paul Krugman ($) (HT: Jim Morse) blames the recent E. Coli outbreak on Milton Friedman...

This week's EconTalk is with my Nobel-prize winning colleague, Vernon Smith...

In an earlier post, I wrote about the ban on trans fats in Montgomery County, MD...

They protect me from late taxis...

Here is Hayek on the essential problem of economics...

Here is Glen Whitman writing about the anatomy of unintended consequences...

In Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Nicholas Taleb gives the example of a person who wants to hire someone to type a copy of Homer's Odyssey...

How have we gotten to the point of sufficient pandering and economic ignorance that the President appoints someone whose job it is to do for the manufacturing sector what lobbyists are being paid to do for other sectors?

John Allison, CEO of BB&T (a bank with $121 billion in assets) defends self-interest and profit in the latest episode of EconTalk...

Reader William Eilberg writes in response to this post...

The road to prosperity for a nation is to find ways to get more from less...

Last year, Sally Satel received a kidney from Virginia Postrel...

In a number of recent posts, there have been comments questioning whether "the market will solve all problems," or whether competition works as advertised...

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Nassim Nicholas Taleb about the ideas in his two books, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan...

I love it when the bootlegger and the Baptist are the same guy...

It is very hard for sports fans, sports writers and even athletes do accurately assess which of their players perform well under pressure and which do not...

The headline in the Washington Post story...

James Surowiecki is surprised that CEO's keep laying off workers even though such moves no longer seem to boost profits...

Here is Alvin Rabushka talking about the flat tax, a radical proposal for tax reform that would eliminate all deductions other than the personal exemptions and tax all income at a single rate...

Headline from an article in today's Wall Street Journal...

The top 1% paid 37% of the income taxes in the latest numbers from 2004...

Robert Frank wants higher taxes on the rich to finance universal health care coverage. His argument...

Here is how one newspaper described a recent speech by the Republican in the White House...

It's a one question quiz...

In the latest EconTalk podcast, Mike Munger and I discuss the division of labor...

Both Smith and Ricardo were deeply interested in specialization...

Paul Krugman foresees an increasing left-leaning electorate. The cause?

The latest EconTalk is a conversation with Kevin Kelly, the founding editor of Wired magazine and the author, among other books, of Out of Control, a wonderful book on spontaneous order...

Here is Al Gore testifying before Congress on the virtues of small-scale energy production...

This is not from The Onion, but from the Associated Press (HT: Drudge)...

David Leonhardt at the New York Times (HT: Jim Morse) reports on a lively debate at Yale on global warming between Nicholas Stern and Yale economists including William Nordstrom and Robert Mendelsohn...

Public discourse on global warming reached a new low recently with this assessment by Ellen Goodman...

Segolene Royal, the Socialist Party's candidate for president of France has issued a major set of policy prescriptions...

Check out this very cool site, Podzinger.com—it let's you search for a word in a podcast...

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has a very strange world view...

The din to do something about global warming appears to be deafening...

All of the episodes of the Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" series are here. (HT: David Peterson)...

In this earlier post, I began a discussion of what are called Pigovian taxes, taxes to reduce activities where the harm caused by one's actions are imposed on others, what economists call negative externalities...

Harold Evans, author of They Made America (a wonderful book), reacts in a letter to the editor ($) to the Atlantic Monthly's list of the 100 most influential Americans...

This week's EconTalk is with Michael Lewis, author of Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and The Blind Side...

In this article at the New York Review of Books (HT: Arnold Kling at EconLog), Paul Krugman accuses Milton Friedman of intellectual dishonesty...

Andy Grove (who has helped transform the world and who I respect greatly) makes the following observation in a piece on energy policy in today's Wall Street Journal editorial page...

Mexico is putting price controls on tortillas to protect the poor from increases in tortilla prices caused by rising prices of corn...

Walter Oi once told me that the two most important choices you make in life are your wife and your parents...

Holman Jenkins finds it strange that Al Gore is the protector of Steve Jobs...

In a comment to my recent post on the empirical literature, Spencer writes...

George Will on the minimum wage...

John Baden writes about how life has changed in Montana:

Just found a remarkable book, Schott's Almanac 2007, written by the amazing Ben Schott, author of Schott's Original Miscellany...

Just finished (in half a day) Michael Lewis's Blind Side, the story of...lots of things—the hidden side of football, race and class in the South, an inner-city kid's journey, how market forces move things in unexpected ways...

In this Washington Post column, Sebastian Mallaby does a nice job explaining the economic contribution of hedge funds and other forms of arbitrage...

Even in Washington, D.C., demands slopes downward...

This week's EconTalk is Pete Boettke talking about Katrina and the general issue of private voluntary responses to disaster compared to centralized responses...

In an earlier post, I discussed Dean Baker's point that there are trade barriers that keep out foreign competition for high-skilled jobs...

Nobel Laureate Edward Prescott takes an Hayekian approach to macro in this commentary at the WSJ:

The latest episode of EconTalk is this conversation with my co-host here at Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux, on the distinction between law and legislation...

In the latest episode of EconTalk, Bryan Caplan and I talk about whether markets can reduce or eliminate discrimination...

Two people marooned on a tropical island trying to collect fresh water and catch fish each day, can almost always do better by specializing—have one person do the fishing and the other do the water collecting...

Wisdom from Arnold Kling in TCS:

This essay over at the Library of Economics and Liberty is part one of a two part series I'm writing on comparative advantage...

Why is Rumsfield gone?

I wrote recently in the Boston Globe about the removal of the traffic rotary in front of the Sagamore Bridge leading to Cape Cod and argued that the hoped-for reductions in traffic were likely to be minimal...

I was talking to some people last night about different approaches to government...

Michael Lewis's Moneyball tells the story of how the Oakland A's became successful…

A beautiful natural experiment has just been set in motion…

Here's an article by Mike Munger on why government doesn't do a good job dealing with new ideas and new products...

Russ Roberts talks to Milton Friedman about the radical ideas he put forward almost 50 years ago in Capitalism and Freedom...

Russ Roberts talks with Milton Friedman about his research and views on inflation, the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, and what the future holds…

Russ Roberts talks with Hoover Institution and NYU political scientist Bruce Bueno de Mesquita about his theory of political power--how dictators and democratically elected leaders respond to the political forces that keep them in office…