Low interest-rate policies in the loanable funds market reduce incentives to save. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that bankruptcy filings for older wage earners is at an all-time high, according to a front-page article in today’s Wall Street Journal (registration required). In 2001, for instance, per capita filings of individuals ages 45
Writes Roderick Long : Q: How many Austrian economists does it take to change a light bulb? A: We don’t make quantitative predictions. I’ve just finished a week of Mises University, lecturing on apriorism, abstraction, and anarchy. It’s encouraging to see the hordes of bright, committed, hardcore Austro-libertarian students that come to these
“Look, I love international trade,” he continued. “I love India so much I’ve taken my family there on vacation. The fact is, does one transfer a job to a foreign country to provide services and products to the home market? The answer is no . This is the first time it’s ever been attempted, and it’s idiotic. “Henry Ford understood that if you pay
From USA Today : T he Justice Department is running an inquiry into how the network deals with college conferences and whether their business practices limit the exposure for some schools. ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys says the network is not commenting. “ESPN has turned sports into a utility,” says Bob Thompson, director of the Center for Study of
A recent publication by the St. Louis Fed notes the relationship between the belief in hell and economic growth. According to the secularization hypothesis, as a country’s inhabitants become richer and more educated, their faith in religion and religious institutions wanes, and they attend church less regularly. Economists Edward Glaeser and Bruce
In Michigan . Reversing more than two decades of land-use law, the Michigan Supreme Court late Friday overturned its own landmark 1981 Poletown decision and sharply restricted governments such as Detroit and Wayne County from seizing private land to give to other private users. The unanimous decision is a decisive victory for property owners who
According to the indispensable (if oxymoronic) Center for Responsive Politics , George W. Bush and John F. Kerry together raised nearly a half a billion dollars from private sources in this year’s presidential election—and both candidates received $75 million of public money on top of that. (Both candidates finished their campaigns with
Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs knows that Africa’s economic woes have nothing to do with poorly defined property rights institutions. They have everything to do with not enough wealth transfers from rich countries to the poor. What Africa needs, then, is not more scolding from the West. It needs a ‘’big push’’ — a flood of foreign aid — to boost its
There are roughly 35 million cattle slaughtered each year in the United States. This means that, in 2003, one in 35 million U.S. cattle were confirmed to have mad cow disease. Infected cattle comprised three millionths of one percent of all cattle, or 0.000003%. So why the mad cow scare? In one sense, the scare is legitimate. It reflects an
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.