free market

Who exploits whom? Spain’s welfare state and the return of zero-sum politics Andrés Ruiz Benito ABSTRACT Public debate increasingly frames inequality as a zero-sum process: “the poor get poorer because the rich get richer”. Proper economic theory rejects this inference for competitive markets, where voluntary exchange and entrepreneurship can expand output and allow gains to […]

  Prison cells are a fascinating economic laboratory, where for over a century thriving markets in goods, services, labor—and even money—have existed. Nowhere else do you find so many people craving entertainment and consumer goods, alongside so many innovative individuals willing to bend the rules to supply them. Everyday prison life also nicely illustrates how […]

  Originating from our “Publish with Us” section, this essay continues our tradition of inviting thinkers and authors to contribute perspectives rooted in the intellectual legacy of the Austrian School of Economics — where individual insight, critical reflection, and open dialogue meet. Introduction It has grown fashionable to hold liberalism and its kindred ideologies in […]

  The year 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the commencement of the Treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), a cornerstone of economic regionalism in the post-Soviet space. The EAEU aims to create a common market for goods, services, capital and labor for its member states – Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan – […]

  In the past, globalization referred to an economic framework in which producers would make use of increasingly larger amounts of intermediate inputs – goods consumed in the production process – imported from all over the world. These new production models involved vast and widely distributed supply chains, transforming local and regional opportunities into worldwide […]