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Economic Theory
Living is about staying busy.
Economic growth is more about quality than quantity.
More than 1,000 years ago, Mesoamerican societies conducted one of history's most interesting experiments in commodity money.
Million Stories
Reading between the lines of Dorothy’s adventure to the Emerald City.
Million Stories
The East India Company issued stocks to minimize the risk on their unpredictable but highly lucrative voyages. The rest is history.
Million Stories
The minimum wage is a popular policy, but it's not the only way governments have tried to help workers secure a decent living.
Seattle slowly raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour. The results provide fuel for both sides of the minimum wage debate.
A clear alternative has yet to emerge.
An analogy explains the greater fool theory: You don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away; you just have to run faster than the other guy.
Our economy is dominated by middlemen, including huge companies such as Walmart and Amazon. There are many benefits to going direct instead.
A next-generation LHC++ could cost $100 billion. Here's why such a machine could end up being a massive waste of money.
Privateers pillaged British merchant ships in the name of liberty — and profit.
Majoring in economics can boost a graduate's early-career income by several thousand dollars, at least for those who live in California.
On forums, “true bitcoiners” didn’t talk about technology or crypto. Instead, they talked about trust and corruption.
Germany finds itself once again allowing a murderous dictator to run rampant in Europe, though this time it is due to incompetence and technophobia rather than malice.
We pretend as if economic sanctions are a peaceful way to coerce others into behaving. In reality, they are a potent tool of modern warfare.
The U.S. has the world's largest debt in absolute terms, but Japan's is the largest when measured in terms of its debt-to-GDP ratio.
Math offers good evidence that humans can solve any problem — as long as there’s money in it.
Unlike the first Roaring Twenties, these won’t end with a Great Depression.
In the most extreme cases, spiraling prices can lead to a collapse in a currency’s value.
6mins
1700s economic principles predicted Uber. A Nobel Prize-winning economist explains why.
Institute for Humane Studies