economic history
Cogs and Monsters: Is Economics Destined to Remain a Dismal Science?
In her bold new book Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be, Cambridge professor Diane Coyle offers a road map...
Buchanan’s Samaritan’s Dilemma
The Samaritan’s dilemma is not only about the detrimental effects help can have on the beneficiaries. As James Buchanan explained in his 1975 essay,...
Looks Can Be Deceiving: Ronald Coase and the Chicago School
Ronald Coase is typically thought of as one of the Chicago School’s brightest lights. But Coase’s relationship with Chicago was always an uneasy one,...
The Complicated Legacy of the “Chicago Boys” in Chile
How did a group of Chicago-trained economists manage to turn Chile into the cradle of neoliberalism? As the country aims to move away from...
Mechanics and Financiers: How Political Economy and Political Ideology Helped Make Detroit the Global Leader of the Automotive Industry
The history of automotive mass production begins with a puzzle: Why did Detroit, of all places, pioneer the industry that would shape the twentieth...
“Old Chicago” and Freiburg: Why Ordoliberalism Was No “German Oddity”
Both the Chicago and Freiburg schools faced systemic fragility as the crucial property of societal orders. It was this fragility that served as the...
A New Antitrust Under Biden? Lessons From the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
The early history of the Sherman Antitrust Act offers relevant insights to contemporary debates on how to best enforce antitrust laws. In fact, the...
American History Provides a Valuable Lesson on How Monopolists Use Exclusive Deals to Fortify Their Market Power
Since the Civil War, dominant firms have widely and repeatedly used exclusive agreements to exert, expand, and fortify their market power. History shows that...
Freiburg and Chicago: How the Two Worlds of Neoliberalism Drifted Apart Over Market Power and Monopolies
Early neoliberals tended to view market power and monopolies as phenomena that somehow had to be reined in by an institutional framework in order...
Harold Demsetz and Israel Kirzner Understood That Competition Regulates Markets
Economists Harold Demsetz and Israel Kirzner challenged the prevailing orthodoxy in microeconomic analysis and public policy beginning with their respective work in the 1960s....
