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...

What is Graham-Cassidy? Graham-Cassidy is the shorthand title for a proposal introduced by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) to repeal and replace Obamacare. Does this legislation “repeal and replace” Obamacare? As with the previous three Republican proposals, the answer is yes and no (but overall, not really). No, the Graham-Cassidy does pletely repeal Obamacare in toto and it merely replaces some aspects of the current law. But yes, it does repeal certain aspects of Obamacare and in...

The scenario is familiar: Ontario has passed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and a new report warns that could increase unemployment. Significant evidence reinforces concerns that this well-intentioned change will harm the poor. Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the minimum wage would rise from $11.40 to $15 an hour across Canada’s most populous province by 2019. That boosts the minimum by nearly one-third. A new report from the Fraser Institute warns such a steep hike leads...

The role of free market economics in the West should not be off-limits for debate among religious conservatives. As Samuel Gregg writes in a new essay, that standard should “provide philosophical and theological guidance about how to ground free economies—and liberal institutions more generally—upon more solid foundations than the peculiar mixes of utilitarianism, autonomy-for-autonomy’s sake, and pseudo-evolutionary theory advocated by some liberal thinkers.” In a new article, First Things editor R. R. Reno makes claims about the market economy and...

“What if large causes of poverty are not matters of material distribution but are behavioral — bad choices and the cultures that produce them? If so, policymakers must rethink their confidence in social salvation through economic abundance.” –George Will According to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the values and priorities of young adults are shifting dramatically from those of generations past. As it relates to family in particular, millennials are pursuing a range of nontraditional routes, either...

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...

President and Co-Founder of the Acton Institute, Rev. Robert Sirico is quoted in an article published at Crux, praising President Trump for his remarks concerning Venezuela’s current social and economic state of chaos. “The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented,” said Trump on Tuesday in his first address to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Sirico tells Crux that he was “relieved and encouraged to hear President...

[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....

In this newest edition of Radio Free Acton, Mollie Ziegler Hemingway, senior editor at The Federalist, talks with Sarah Stanley, managing editor at the Acton Institute. Mollie explains how distrust for news in the media has grown and how integrity in journalism can be reclaimed. Mollie’s conversation with Sarah is a sampling of an ing Acton lecture series event taking place on September 28th. Bruce Edward Walker then speaks with writer and musician, Robert Dean Lurie about the newest Fleet...

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...