All Posts Tagged With: "market failure"
The Free Market Is Failing? It Just Aint So!
There is no doubt the U.S. economy has hit a rough patch over the last several months. As is often the case when economic problems make headlines, pundits rush to declare that capitalism is “in trouble,” or “is ailing” or even “has failed.” This reaction to economic bad news is as old as capitalism itself. [...]
1Dec2008 | Steven Horwitz | 5 comments | ContinuedMisunderstanding Efficiency
Gary Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University.
Efficiency—getting the most value from a given amount of resources—is important in a world of scarcity. The more efficient people are, the better off they can make themselves. That’s why economists are always talking about efficiency. Unfortunately, what economists have to say on the subject is [...]
Uneven Information Causes Market Failure? It Just Aint So!
In a famous 1970 paper, economics Nobel Laureate George Akerlof used the market for used cars to show how differences in information between buyers and sellers (“asymmetric information”) could lead a market to shrink or collapse entirely. A large variety of markets have been said to fail because of asymmetric information, from all different types [...]
1Dec2007 | Joshua C. Hall | 0 comments | ContinuedOn Misplaced Concreteness in Social Theory
Joseph Stromberg (jrstromberg@charter.net) is a historian and freelance writer.
The following piece will not be as abstruse as its title suggests. Rather, it results from the simple observation that, time and time again, some harmful outcome or process commonly attributed to the everyday workings of the market economy actually does exist, but it exists in the [...]
The Progressive Era’s Derailment of Classical-Liberal Evolution
Fred Smith is president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
It is true that where a considerable part of the costs incurred are external costs from the point of view of the acting individuals or firms, the economic calculation established by them is manifestly defective and their results deceptive. But this is not the outcome of alleged [...]
Enron and Argentina Are Examples of Market Failure? It Just Aint So!
In the eyes of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, nearly everything that goes wrong in the world is caused by the fact that government is not big and powerful enough. In a mid-December 2001 column he blamed both the bankruptcy of Enron and the collapse of the Argentine economy on deregulation. But, as is [...]
1May2002 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the World by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
Simon and Schuster • 1998 • 352 pages • $26.00
David L. Littmann is senior vice president and chief economist of Comerica Bank, Detroit, Michigan.
The danger in telling a good story is often the sacrifice of key facts, thereby distorting the reader’s understanding of reality. In The Commanding Heights, authors Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw describe [...]
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The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let it Happen
By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Peter J. Tanous
