Don Boudreaux is an economist at George Mason University who blogs at Cafe Hayek . He has a long history with the Austrian and Public Choice schools, and is in the trenches daily making the case for free trade. For more information, see BobMurphyShow.com . The Bob Murphy Show is also available on iTunes , Stitcher , Spotify , and via RSS
The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) The pattern is all-too-familiar: Congress and its bureaus of executive-branch henchmen arrogantly mock the Constitution, only to be applauded by the courts. Nowhere is this pattern more evident than the recent case of Leslie Salt Co. vs. the United States . Here are the facts. For decades, a 153-acre
As regards the Schumer and Roberts piece contra traditional free-trade doctrine, we should not forget that Ricardo was writing in 1817, and stating for the first time in the English language a principle that had not yet been fully grasped (at least not by anyone whose work had become well-known) and that is one of the less intuitive notions in
I’m honored that Paul Craig Roberts took time to respond to my post. I preface my remarks here by saying that I write as an economist, not as a libertarian. Dr. Roberts is not quite right when he says that “comparative advantage results from different countries having different internal cost ratios.” In fact, comparative advantage results whenever
Dr. Roberts is misled by the emphasis on the specific institutional assumptions used by international-trade theorists — institutional assumptions used to reveal most clearly the relevance of their work to the study of international trade. But it has been long recognized by economists, especially international-trade economists, that the principle
I cannot decipher what Craig Roberts is saying. But this I know: the case for specialization and trade in no way requires factor immobility; nor does the theory of comparative advantage require factor immobility for its applicablity. What Ricardo or Mill or Mises or anyone else said is ultimately immaterial; the theory of comparative advantage
In response to my earlier post, Paul Craig Roberts says that “If the factors can leave, they do not specialize within the country where they have a comparative advantage. They can move abroad where there is absolute advantage.” I can make no sense of what he means. First, the concept of absolute advantage is meaningless. All advantage, all cost,
The Free Market 13, no. 9 (September 1995) Want to please a lawyer? Find a long-established legal rule that minimizes disputes. Then propose that this rule be radically changed. Such thrill seeking seems to be the motive behind a recent proposal to make advertisers liable for “puffery.” The national Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.