By Robert Higgs | Thursday December 20, 2012 at 8:09 PM PDT | 3 Comments
In Federalist 62, published in the Independent Journal, February 27, 1788, James Madison writes as follows: It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be...
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Tags: American History, Business, Economics, History, Law, Politics, Property Rights, The State
By Robert Higgs | at 1:36 PM PDT | 3 Comments
For decades, American families espoused the not-quite-Cartesian ontology: I go into debt; therefore I am. Household debt climbed ever higher through good times and bad. Since the onset of the current recession, however, household debt has contracted substantially for the first time in more than half a century. After reaching a peak at $13.82...
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Tags: Economics, Federal Reserve, Housing
By Peter Klein | at 9:38 AM PDT | 0 Comments
Following up Carl’s post, while Bork is remembered largely as a Constitutional scholar, his important early contributions dealt with antitrust. He was sharply critical of the modern application of US antitrust law, while remaining wedded to the Knight-Friedman-Stigler idea of perfect competition as a welfare benchmark, leading to a number of confusions and contradictions....
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Tags: Austrian School of economics, Economics, Monopoly and Antitrust, Regulation