Note: This is post #49 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. What would happen if we eliminated patents for industries with high R&D costs, such as the pharmaceutical industry? Eliminating patents in this case may result in less innovation and, specifically, fewer new drugs being created, explains economist Alex Tabarrok. In this video by Marginal Revolution University he considers some of the tradeoffs of patents and looks at alternative ways to reward research and development such as patent...

The claim that “crime doesn’t pay” was an early slogan of the FBI. But while the claim may be a truism in the long run, in the short-term criminal activity can produce an parable to the earnings of a middle-class worker. At least that’s the finding of a new paper published in the journal Criminology. Holly Nguyen of Pennsylvania State University and Thomas Loughran of the University of Maryland-College Park attempt to gauge how much money people earn through criminal...

A recent poll revealed that a near majority of Americans believe free speech should not be extended to extremist groups. Another poll found that a large number of citizens favor permitting the courts to fine news media outlets for publishing or broadcasting stories that are biased or inaccurate. (Almost half of Republicans (45 percent) would favor such a policy, and 35 percent say they simply haven’t heard enough to say.) And in Russia, the government has banned the religious group...

Commentators have long said that banning genetically modified food (GMOs) harms human flourishing. Thanks to a new study, that harm can now be quantified. A study published in late July studies the impact of delaying the approval of GMOs in five nations: Benin, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda. The researchers – who hail from the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, and the United States (surprisingly enough, from the University of California at Berkeley) – analyzed the effects of political decisions to...

As urbanization accelerates around the world, local municipalities and city planners are struggling to keep up with the pace. Sometimes and in some areas, it’s easier to work outside the government altogether. Such is the case for the Redeemed Christian Church of God in Lagos Nigeria, which has slowly developed a city of sorts over the past 30 plete with an independent power plant and privately managed security, infrastructure, and sanitation. “In Nigeria, the line between church and city is...

[A review of Milosz: A Biography by Andrzej Franasszek, edited and translated by Aleksandra and Michael Parker, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge University, 2017, 526 pp., $35] “What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people?” – Czeslaw Milosz (“Dedication”) In the 1970s – the last full decade before Poland finally freed itself from the shackles munist control –Lech Walesa, the leader of Solidarity, the Soviet bloc’s first trade union, was arrested on more than one occasion....

Do you live vocationally in your day job, even if you aren’t making a career of it? God’s calling on your life is not a maintenance request, the task is not finite, nor is it particular. Answer God’s call will transform your entire life—starting now, right where you are. ...

To be good citizens, faithful people must examine policies’ results, not just their intentions.One overly intrusive environmentalist policy alone has prevented the poor from accessing adequate housing and, ironically, reduced the diversity of the environment. If excluding the vulnerable from the economy is evil, as Pope Francis has written, then new approaches are needed, writesPhilip Booth,a distinguished British professor of finance in a new essay forReligion & Liberty Transatlantic. He begins by opening an earnest dialogue with the pontiff’s social...

According to Founding Father James Madison, “the rights of persons and the rights of property” constituted the “two cardinal objects of government.” And the “most sacred form of property,” according to Madison, was an individual’s conscience since “other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and inalienable right . . .” Both property and conscience (religious freedom) have been considered foundational rights. But what exactly do they have mon? More than we may...

In 1991 Minnesota passed the first law establishing charter schools in the state. Since then, a majority of states have some kind of charter school system. But what exactly is a charter school? And are they better for students? ...