In January I left Suffolk University to start the new Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University. I remain affiliated as a Senior Fellow with the Independent Institute and plan to continue my productive relationship with them well into the future. Since I’ve continued to write commentary for Independent some of you might have...
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In 1913, exactly a century ago, the United States was a flourishing, economically advanced country. Its real output per capita was the world’s highest. It produced a great abundance of agricultural products and was a leading exporter of cotton, wheat, and many other farm products. Yet it also had the world’s largest industrial sector,...
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The Spring 2013 issue of The Independent Review—the Independent Institute’s flagship scholarly journal, edited by Robert Higgs—is hot off the press. Below you’ll find links to articles and book reviews that address a host of intriguing questions: Why have domestic police agencies across the United States resorted increasingly to “no-knock” raids and other military-type...
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Arline Alchian Hoel reports that her father, Armen Alchian, “passed away peacefully in his sleep early this morning at his home in Los Angeles.” He was 98 years old. Armen Alchian was a major figure in the economics profession for more than half a century. At UCLA, where he spent his academic career as...
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The world-renowned philosopher Alvin C. Plantinga has recently received the prestigious Nicholas Rescher Prize for Contributions to Systematic Philosophy, awarded by the University of Pittsburgh’s Departments of Philosophy, History, and Philosophy of Science, and the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science. Plantinga is widely known for his work in the philosophy of...
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A bottle of Jack Daniels is sitting on our kitchen counter, the result of a fire in our microwave oven. The oven was destroyed so we ordered a replacement, which was supposed to be installed a few days ago, but the installers who showed up couldn’t get the new oven into the spot where...
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James M. Buchanan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 1986 for his pioneering work that developed the field of public choice, passed away on January 9, 2013, at age 93. Buchanan’s work has had a major influence in academic economics and beyond, and he was one of the twentieth century’s leading...
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Libertarians divide into two broad classes: those who espouse a free society because it gives better results than an unfree society, and those who espouse a free society because they believe that it is wrong to deny or suppress a person’s right to be free (unless, of course, that person is suppressing the equal...
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When Paul Krugman starts attacking us, we know we’re doing something right. John Maynard Keynes’s presumptive heir, Krugman apparently doesn’t like the findings of our recent book edited by Research Fellow David Beckworth, Boom & Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession, exposing the profound fallacies of Lord Keynes’s love affair...
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The American Federation of Teachers has just released a report calling for teachers to pass a bar exam before entering the profession. Similar to lawyers and doctors, AFT President Randi Weingarten says, “It’s time to do away with a common rite of passage into the teaching profession—whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys...
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