Art Carden

Here's a new Mere Economics-adjacent paper, "The Samaritan's Dilemma in the Caritapolis," that I wrote for an Independent Review symposium on James M. Buchanan's "The Samaritan's Dilemma." The abstract: James M. Buchanan's "The Samaritan'

I've written a bunch of papers on W.H. Hutt that you can find on my SSRN page. I don't know that I would have read much Hutt had the Ludwig von Mises Institute not made a lot of his books available gratis. Here is what

In Mere Economics, we tried to rely on open-access resources wherever we could. Here are a few places to go if you want to check our work: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, via the most excellent Project Gutenberg. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy. Via the most excellent Project Gutenberg Australia. Frederick Engels, Socialism:

This morning, I'm participating in an Economic Forecast Panel for the Birmingham Business Journal. Here are my preliminary thoughts based on some of the questions they shared with me beforehand. What Can We Expect From the New Administration? The Good: Trump, like most Republicans, talks a good game

Note: This post originally appeared at The American Institute for Economic Research. It’s pretty clear: if you wanted Joan of Arc to appreciate the differences between her world and ours, you would take her to the nearest Walmart. In 1989’s critically acclaimed cinematic masterpiece Bill & Ted’s

I'm a big fan of paying for convenience. In any decision, you have to weigh the costs and the benefits very carefully. That's why, on a recent trip to visit my sister and her family in Minneapolis, I paid the person next to me $10 to

Academia: "Basic research is a public good the market will under-provide because there are spillover benefits market prices don't capture." Also Academia: "Pregnancy is a disease and 'stereotypes about gender, as well as efforts to exploit the reproductive bodies of chickens, have aided the

In 1986, James M. Buchanan was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work developing public choice theory. As luck would have it, Liberty Fund has made some of his most important works available online. Here are some of the most important ones. Buchanan's Nobel Prize Page. It'

The last two issues of Regulation contain a couple of my book reviews. Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative, by Glenn Loury. Review here. Glenn Loury is one of the greatest economist of the last half-century, and his name comes up in the Nobel Prize conversation. He also hosts

Show me anything, and I will immediately gravitate to its flaws and imperfections. I have a flair for the negative. I worry about worst-case scenarios. I fret about injustice. As far as I know, I always have, but I have particularly vivid memories of being emotionally devastated when I learned