Mises Search

To illustrate one of the pernicious effects of socialism to my classes, I will often ask students what would happen if I decided to minimize failure by taking away points from the A students and give them to the F students. What happens to the incentives faced by hard-working students who get good grades? What lessons are learned by the

The Church of England has some monopoly power in this area, causing it to lose its focus and ignore the needs of its consumers. The Economist calls for its disestablishment . An excerpt: Establishment brings fewer material advantages to the Church of England these days than the Lutherans, for example, enjoy in much of Scandinavia. And a creeping

Italians love cash and avoid credit and debit purchases at the highest rate of all the euro region. As a result, they are among the region’s least indebted and biggest savers. It’s estimated that the government loses 100 billion euros of revenue a year in untaxed transactions, while its banking cartel loses out on billions of possible fee revenue

That is the title of a new paper in the latest issue of Critical Review, by Colander, Goldberg, Haas, Juselius, Kirman, Lux, and Sloth. The article is not yet online, but the abstract is here : Economists not only failed to anticipate the financial crisis; they may have contributed to it–with risk and derivatives models that, through spurious

For a few years now, a modern form of Luddite-ism has decried a seemingly ramped-up use of technology that is expected to upend labor markets in the near future to degrees heretofore unseen. In this world, what we know as fast food restaurants will become completely self-serve , with iPad-ish screens used to order French fries and machines in the

Readers of the Mises Economics Blog will be glad to know of a job opening : Detroit’s Wayne State University is seeking “a nationally prominent academic leader for the Coleman A. Young Endowed Chair in Urban Affairs.” Coleman Young was, of course, the corrupt mayor of Detroit from 1974 to 1994 and is seen today as one of the most destructive and

I visited Baltimore once, about 10 years ago, for an academic conference.  While I remember its colonial-era architecture, the historic cathedral that once housed the great Cardinal Gibbons, and fun, chowder-laden conversations with local and visiting economists in brew pubs—the image  that remains in my mind is that of the rats.  These mangy pack

Those possessing the anti-capitalist mentality — so ascendant in our culture today — often critique market actors as being solely motivated by “greed.” Surely economic systems based on nobler motivations, they say, would better promote the long-run interests of the planet. The Voluntary Marketplace Uses Greed as Motivation to Serve Others This is

I’m no Crunchy Con , but I confess to being sympathetic to the organic food movement in the United States. Although I do not always buy organic, I am glad that the market caters to the segment of the population that does. Locally-grown and otherwise farm fresh meat, vegetables, milk, and eggs often taste better and are healthier than the output of

The Greek financial crisis is far from over, although the latest developments show how much the establishment players in the bailout want to move on to the-crisis-is-over-so-turn-your-attention-elsewhere mode.  While previous bailouts have always been about bailing out the big banks in France and Germany, this one looks different in that it