On Monday the University of Chicago’s Richard Thaler won a Nobel Prize for his work in behavioral economics. “Thaler’s work raises important questions about the state’s influence over human action,” says Victor V. Claar in this week’s Acton Commentary. In some years two or three economists share the prize for their collective contributions to a specific line of inquiry, but this year the 72-year-old Thaler was the sole recipient for his accumulated plishments in behavioral economics. Put simply, behavioral economics...

A few years ago the following quote from Christopher Columbus started making the rounds: For one woman they give a hundred castellanos, as for a farm; and this sort of trading is mon, and there are already a great number of merchants who go in search of girls; there are at this moment some nine or ten on sale; they fetch a good price, let their age be what it will. Sounds pretty damning. Christopher Columbus did, indeed, write that....

Abraham Kuyper knew that revolutions almost always make life worse, says WORLD magazine’s Marvin Olasky: Theologically, Kuyper followed John Calvin and other Reformers. Politically, he said government must not obstruct proclamation of the gospel, promote a counter-gospel, take away religious freedom, or coerce conscience. Reliance on central government “begets a slow process of dissolution that cannot but end in the demoralization of government and people alike.” Kuyper’s alternative was “sphere sovereignty.” That meant leaders in education, business, religion, media, and...

Every Columbus Day gives rise to endless debates and recriminations over the impact of Christopher Columbus’ expedition upon the indigenous peoples of the Americas. No honest observer can dismiss the injustices perpetrated after Columbus’ landing (nor before it), but one benefit of his voyage has been forgotten: It inadvertently exposed the Americas to theSchool of Salamanca. This late scholastic school of Roman Catholic thought emphasized individual rights, human dignity, and economic liberty (particularly against government-sponsored inflation; for more, see Faith...

If the boy is father to the man, then I was raised by a profligate dunce. Even though I had learned the power pound interest in high school, I foolishly squandered my trivial savings at a time when the “eighth wonder of the world,” as Albert Einstein called it, would have had the greatest impact. Had I invested a mere $2,000 in Apple stock on my 18th birthday I would now be $252,039 richer and well on my way to...

The deleterious side effects of the $15-per-hour minimum wage have continued to manifest across the country, affecting cities from Seattle to Minneapolis and states from California to New York. To illustrate the damage, the Employment Policies Instituteis maintaining a catalog of suffering businesses across the country, highlighting stories of raised consumer prices, increased unemployment, reduced working hours, and outright business closures. I’ve pointed to several of those stories in the past, and in four new videos, EPI offers fresh glimpses...

Forecasters disagree over whether ing wave of robotic automation will usher in a utopia or a wasteland, but none questions a future where automotons increasingly put human beings out of work.“What Jobs Will Still be Around in 20 Years?” asks the Guardian. “The Future Has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans,”Wired forecast.Robots and artificial intelligence will take up to 38 percent of all jobs in the United States and 30 to 35 percent of jobs in the EU, according...

Note: This is post #52 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. What is tying and how is this a form of price discrimination? An example of a tied good is an HP printer and the HP ink you need for that printer. The printer (the base good) is often relatively cheap whereas the ink (the variable good) has a high markup, and eventually costs you far more than what you paid for the printer. Why panies tie their...