Note: This is post #46 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Why are price signals and petition so important to a market economy? When prices accurately signal costs and benefits and markets petitive, the Invisible Hand ensures that costs are minimized and production is maximized, explains Alex Tabarrok. If these conditions aren’t met, market inefficiencies arise and the Invisible Hand cannot do its work. In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Tabarrok shows how two major processes, creative...

The government of Poland recently funded media outlets that agreed to cover the EU’s international wealth redistribution program, the EU Structural Funds. The fact that one of the recipients was a Catholic weekly raises numerous moral and ethical questions. Marcin Rzegocki, who lives in Poland, describes the “omnipresent” propaganda, funded by taxpayer funds, intended to promote the public perception of the European Union. In a new essay forReligion & Liberty Transatlantic, he reveals the extent of the issue. The government...

The fall of the Berlin Wall remains the greatest symbolic victory of freedom over tyranny in the modern age. Yet the triumph of liberty finds itself threatened by corruption and a propaganda war wrapped up in religious sentiment, according to a prominent Eastern mentator. Mihail Neamtu, a public intellectual in Romania, warns that Eastern Europe is in danger of backsliding away from democracy and the free market in a new essay forReligion & Liberty Transatlantic. “Pervasive cronyism is slowly corroding...

Hurricanes like Harvey almost always leave two things in their aftermath: broken windows and articles advocating thebroken window fallacy. Unfortunately, while we can’t stop hurricanes fromoccurring we should be able to put an end to bizarre idea that natural disasters that destroy property are beneficial to our economy. For after 6,712 cyclones, typhoons, and hurricanes the evidence is clear: Bastiat was right all along. In 1850, the economic journalist Frédéric Bastiat introduced the parable of the broken window to illustrate...

When es to political policy, Christians in America have a wide-range of opinions about what should be done. Even when we agree on a general principle, we tend to disagree about how that informs our policy choices. We recognize, for instance, that we have an obligation to care for the poor but differ on the type and degree of government involvement. Such differences can lead us to believe that there is nothing we can agree on. But I don’t believe...

As a child growing up in rural poverty, Tom Nelson was constantly confronted by material lack and the social shame that es with it, instilling an acute sense that economics mattered. Yet years later, as a seminary student hoping to e a pastor, he quickly lost sight of that basic intuition, taking a dualistic approach to “full-time ministry” that relegated economic life to the sidelines. “Economics was for economists; theology was for pastors. There were no points of intersection —...

The newest issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 20, no. 1, has been published online and print copies are in the mail. This issue is a special issue on “Morality, Neoclassical Economics, and John Maynard Keynes.” Guest editors Victor V. Claar and Greg Forster describe the issue as follows in their editorial: [A]s this special issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality will help illuminate, our need to sort issues into separate “economic” and “cultural” categories...

The violent reaction to President Trump’s Phoenix rally and the ongoing fallout over Charlottesville show the issue of the Alt-Right, and its Antifa antagonists, is going nowhere. Americans struggle to understand what kind of “conservatism” the Alt-Right represents, as well as the nature of the protesters. A prominent mentator has noted that both movements have attempted to infiltrate broader and more popular movements – against racism or in favor of free speech, respectively – in order to camouflage their extremist...

Churches in America are closing at an alarming rate, with an estimated 3,400 to 4,000 singing their final hymns and closing their doors each year. The majority of these churches are almost certainly in rural areas that are seeing unprecedented declines in population. Over the last 40 years, most munities have experienced high rates of out-migration to urban areas, leaving behind an aging populace that is slowly dying off. A study by the Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service shows...

The necessities of life include food, water, clothing, and shelter … but should the government cost more than all of them put together? A new study has found that politicians extract more in taxes than working families pay for their basic human needs. Canadian families paid more to the tax collectorthan they did to the farmer, the grocer, the landlord, and the seamstress to sustain life itself, according to a new study from the Fraser Institute, a free market think...