Essays & News

  “I would like to set out in this book the reasons why the traditional state as a monopoly enterprise not only is an inefficient enterprise with a poor price-performance ratio, but even more importantly, becomes more of a danger for humanity the longer it lasts.” Hans-Adam II, Reigning Prince of Liechtenstein   First published […]

  The steam engine, followed by electricity, the combustion engine (leading to automobiles) and computers all brought tremendous improvements and productivity gains, leading to widespread prosperity in many countries. They also caused great anxieties and fear of unemployment. Yet, the increased prosperity created new demand, and the jobs lost, for instance in agriculture, were replaced […]

  “In the building practices of ancient Rome, when scaffolding was removed from a completed Roman arch, the Roman engineer stood beneath. If the arch came crashing down, he was the first to know. Thus his concern for the quality of the arch was intensely personal, and it is not surprising that so many Roman […]

  …And when is it just a family feud? Robert Hall coined “freshwater” and “saltwater” in 1976 to describe a split in macroeconomics: the freshwater camp—Chicago, Minnesota, the University of Rochester—building models where markets clear quickly and government intervention mostly just gets in the way; the saltwater camp—MIT, Harvard, Berkeley—building models with sticky prices and […]

  Seventeen thousand years ago, deep inside a cave in what is now the Dordogne, someone lifts a shallow stone lamp filled with melted animal fat and touches a flame to the wick. Light spills across the rock. The painter starts to work, and the bulls and horses of Lascaux begin to appear on the […]