A Current Burden of Deficit Financing
My late Nobel-laureate colleague James Buchanan made many important contributions. Among the most significant is his proof, first offered in...
Donald J. Boudreaux
Behind Seemingly ‘Objective’ Statistics
Statistics are often useful. Their careful collection and interpretation can improve both the practice of social science and the formation...
Choice: Real and In Extremis
A hypothetical routinely used to probe the limits of freedom of contract involves a person in extremis who is thereby...
The Enduring Relevance of Mises and Hayek’s Critique of Socialism
In my previous column I summarized Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek’s explanation of why full-on socialism is destined to...
The Inevitable Failure of Socialism
Among the most important articles ever written in economics is Ludwig von Mises’s 1920 paper “Die Wirtschaftsrechnung im sozialistischen Gemeinwesen”...
The Radical Message of Economics Well-Learned
From the moment that I, at the age of 18, first became conscious that I had concrete ideological views, my...
On Track for Calamitous Policy Outcomes
You must travel down one of two – A or B – railroad tracks, but you can choose between A...
Letters to the Editor
For more than three decades I’ve written letters-to-the-editor on an almost daily basis. The number of such letters that I’ve...
Teaching Introductory Economics
In just over a week I’ll meet the 283 students in my Fall 2021 ECON 103 – “Principles of Microeconomics”...
Some Classical Liberal Priors
No one can seriously deny that each person has priors – suppositions about the workings of the world that are...
Rich Man, Poor Man: Comparing the Value of a Dollar to Each
A familiar case for progressive taxation of incomes – and, more generally, for income redistribution – rests on the proposition...
The Invisible Hand Relies Upon Visible Prices
Adam Smith famously described each person who pursues his or her own interest in markets as being “led by an...
