Calculation and Knowledge

One question about socialists has for many years puzzled me: how can they exist? The Soviet Experiment, the Chinese Great Leap Forward, etc. are now "one with Nineveh and Tyre";

Without an accurate accounting picture, federal agencies do not know the costs of their programs and do not have the financial information needed to make informed day-to-day decisions. The government's failure to maintain common accounting standards creates the possibility that billions of dollars have been stolen or wasted.

The field in economics called "Industrial Organization" is the very foundation of antitrust activity by government. And if you thought antitrust action was little more than one business using government to smash its competitors, The Economist is here to correct you.

Ed Shanahan on the significance of the Austrian tradition. 

Is antitrust policy science or the same old racket?

The meaning of the newest Nobel Prize in economics.

Financial instability and anti-capitalist fallacies about booms and busts. 

N. Scott Arnold's outstanding book makes a vital contribution to the debate over socialism; but Arnold has in part misconceived his own achievement. 

Leland Yeager's rejoinder "Salerno on Calculation, Knowledge, and Appraisement" (1996) merits a final word, because it makes a subtle though very important concession to the argument made by Rothbard, Herbener, and Salerno regarding the function of the price system.

This is a most peculiar book. As a glance at McCloskey's enormous bibliography suffices to reveal, our author appears to have read everything.