Indebted: How Families Make College Work at Any Cost
Caitlin Zaloom
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019
viii + 267 pp.

Unprofitable Schooling: Examining Causes of, and Fixes for, America’s Broken Ivory Tower
Todd J. Zywicki and Neal P. McCluskey, eds.
Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2019
268 pp.

Jason Morgan (jmorgan3@wisc.edu) is associate professor at Reitaku University in Chiba, Japan.​

Abstract: Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski’s The People’s Republic of Walmart entered the scene in 2019 with the remarkable idea that mammoth firms such as Walmart and Amazon, by being able to direct huge volumes of resources—sometimes with the capacity of entire countries—without an inner market to signal prices, are living evidence of the viability of a collectively planned economy. Moreover, they argue that the nondemocratic command system that often accompanies the structure of firms is due to their operation in a profit-seeking market system.

Abstract: The concept of intellectual property (IP) has been variously criticized as incompatible with natural rights and detrimental to the dissemination of innovations. In this paper I argue that it can be criticized on an even more fundamental level—namely as a praxeological impossibility.

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Media pundits and politicians are now in the habit of claiming it was the pandemic itself that has caused unemployment to skyrocket and economic growth to plummet. The claim is that sick and dying workers, fearful consumers, and disrupted supply chains would cause economic chaos.

Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly
John Quiggin
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019
xii + 390 pp.

Prosperity and Liberty: What Venezuela Needs…
Rafael Acevedo, ed.
Miami: Econintech, 2019
xvii + 153 pp.