Economics Roundtable

F.A. Hayek was born on this day in 1899.  To mark this occasion, I offer a brief passage from page 104 of Hayek's 1973 book Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 1: Rules and Order:

Maintaining the overall flow of results in a complex system of production requires great ...

Think the proposed gas-tax holiday is a wacky idea?  My GMU colleague -- and EconLog's -- Bryan Caplan gives you good reason to think again.

Bryan Caplan's book The Myth of the Rational Voter : rationally, I'm a big fan.

Especially in light of the renewed efforts to regulate the terms that credit-card issuers are allowed to offer to borrowers, Jeremy Bentham's short little classic Defence of Usury is well worth reading.  Below is a germane passage.  Writing of a potential borrower whose circumstances put him in ...

Along with persons far more insightful than me, I offer a few thoughts on the current economic downturn in the new issue of Reason.

The latest EconTalk is John Nye talking about his book, War, Wine, and Taxes. John has many interesting insights into the political economy of trade, the history of trade policy, and why Ricardo's canonical example of comparative advantage is particularly weird.

I've never been invited to deliver a commencement address.  And I probably should never be so invited, for I already know the title I would choose: "Don't Change the World."  I would explain that it's okay -- indeed, admirable -- to change the world marginally, incrementally, by engaging in ...

My colleague Walter Williams offers great good sense here.

When legislation is harmful -- such as when it attempts to restrict the carrying out of peaceful exchange among consenting adults -- it is widely disrespected.  One of the many unfortunate consequences of harmful legislation is that the disrespect it ...

Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi is superb.

Here's a letter that I sent today to the Wall Street Journal:

Adhering to the general practice of saying that free trade has both winners and losers, you introduce two letters on Nafta with the heading "Nafta Has Helped Some, Hurt Some" (Letters, May 2).  But this familiar endeavor to ...