September 15 will mark five years since the beginning of the economic slump that defines the world we live in. Disaster was in the air already by that day in…

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In 1972, the economics department at Harvard denied tenure to the leftist professor Samuel Bowles. Responding to the decision in the Harvard Crimson, Bowles asserted that he had been passed…

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The lady who changed the world,” was how The Economist described Margaret Thatcher in its obituary. Whether or not we believe that individuals ever wield such power over history, it…

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Debt forgiveness is one of the most important innovations of modern capitalism, but it is a fairly recent one. Though the Constitution gives Congress explicit authority to enact “uniform Laws…

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Last spring I sat on a panel convened to discuss the publication of The Occupy Handbook, a collection of essays in which a number of prominent economists addressed issues raised…

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China’s Wild West gets tamed

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Following heavy Democratic losses in the 2010 congressional elections, Barack Obama announced that he was reading a biography of Ronald Reagan to see how the great man had handled his…

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It’s dangerous to express optimism about the economy these days. Europe’s financial markets remain fragile. China, which supports much of the world’s economy through imports, is too dependent on highly…

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China loses a populist star

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