In their writings, Finn Kydland and Edward C. Prescott (K-P), the 2004 Nobel laureates in economics, had hypothesized that a major cause behind boom-bust cycles is technology shocks. In order to assess the importance of this claim, which they labeled the theory of real business cycles, K-P employed the Solow growth model (after Robert Solow, the 1987 Nobel laureate), which in turn is based on the Cobb-Douglas production function of the following type:

Y = A*K(1–a)*Na,

In last week’s article, I discussed some of the arguments Yoram Hazony gives in his book Conservatism: A Rediscovery in favor of an empiricist procedure in ethics that supports working within a particular national tradition and against the rationalist deductive method of those who without empirical evidence defend the supreme value of freedom by postulating it arbitrarily as an axiom. I tried to show that one could support the self-ownership principle by an empirical argument that appealed to human nature.

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday increased its policy interest rate (known as the overnight target rate) from 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. This was the second fifty–basis point increase since April and is the third target rate increase since March of this year. Canada’s target rate had been flat at 0.25 percent for twenty-three months following the bank’s slashing of the target rate beginning in March 2020.

Even as much of the world continues to move past the covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) is already looking ahead and preparing for the emergence of “other pandemics and other major health emergencies.” To ensure that the world is adequately prepared for future pandemics, “the World Health Assembly” held a sp

With a budget surplus of more than $200 million, the California legislature is thinking big, really big, and that means one thing: single-payer government healthcare, which recently was introduced as AB 1400. Notes the Los Angeles Times:

Listeners of The Human Action Podcast and Radio Rothbard sometimes remark on the intro and outro music from heavy metal band Megadeth.