Economic History

In their research, published in History of Economic Ideas, Thierry Kirat and Frédéric Marty stress the importance of the late 1930s in the making of antitrust. The moment was exceptional for its consensus within the economic discipline and the implementation of voluntarist public enforcement, particularly under Thurman Arnold according to the prescriptions of the Second Chicago School, institutionalists, and the preferences of the Neo-Brandeis movement.

Breaking up companies that antitrust regulators consider too dominant can be costly and might negatively impact innovation and consumer welfare. As economists and policymakers...

Industrial policy was once so out of fashion that it was jokingly called “the policy that shall not be named.” Now it’s back in...

American capitalism was built on racial exploitation, from the enslavement of Black people to institutionalized discrimination and its structural impact on our nation’s economic...

The historical origins of financial crises teaches us about changing attitudes toward government intervention into private markets. A lesson frequently taught by twentieth century economists...

In this excerpt of a new book, The Capital Order, Clara Mattei traces the origins of austerity to the period just after World War...

Much of the historical analysis of neoliberalism, both its ideological roots and its outcomes, has focused on U.S. and Europe, with figures such as...

In this celebration of Adam Smith’s contributions to the field of political economy, Peter J. Boettke and Alain Marciano take a passage from The...

IG Farben used to be the world’s largest chemical company and a major innovator—until it was broken up in one of the largest antitrust...

A new data collection has made it possible to reveal the self-sovereignty of the English East India Trading Company that produced a company-state and...