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New President, Same Bad Policies
The Trump administration’s trade war gave economics teachers countless real-world examples of bad policy they can use in the classroom. A new open letter…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Biden was inaugurated on Wednesday. With the usual end-of-administration midnight rush now over, things will likely slow down. It takes time for new appointees…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy MLK Day, everyone. The Trump administration’s final full week was an eventful one. The president was impeached for a second time. The usual end-of-administration…
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Economics Can Help Explain Conspiracy Theorists
There is a lot of conspiracy theory garbage floating around. On January 6, it took a violent turn. Five people died in a coup attempt…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
After last week’s insurrection at the Capitol, the outgoing president, several elected officials, and their supporters have some soul-searching to do. Meanwhile, agencies continued to…
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Toward Simplifying Antitrust Regulation
Antitrust regulation is a complex mess. Multiple agencies have overlapping jurisdiction with no set rules for determining who takes which cases. One of the antitrust…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy new year, everyone. We made it. 2020 was rough, but as I argued last week, it was not the worst year ever. 2020…
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Regulation in 2020: Some Quick Numbers
The 251st and final issue of the 2020 Federal Register was released this morning. Here are some of the initial findings: Federal agencies issued 3,353…
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2020 Was Difficult. It Was Not the Worst Year Ever
It’s been a hard year, and I am hardly alone in being glad it’s almost over. But was 2020 the worst year ever? Over…
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Best Books of 2020: Joseph Henrich – The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous
It’s early, but The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich will likely be…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Last week’s drama over the combined COVID-19 spending bill and omnibus budget bill ran over into Christmas, spoiling a three-day work week in Washington. In…
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Best Books of 2020: Virgil Henry Storr and Ginny Seung Choi – Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019)
Most people see markets as dens of greed and moral corruption. In their new book, Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals?, Virgil…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
COVID vaccine rollout has started. While immunizing millions of people will take several months, it looks like the worst is almost past. For scientists to…
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To-Do List for 2021: Just Get Rid of AB5
It isn’t just Washington that gets a fresh start beginning in January. California gets one, too. One of the top items on the Golden State’s…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big news is that the Food and Drug Administration is poised to follow several other countries’ lead in approving one or more coronavirus vaccines.
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The Relevant Market Fallacy and Facebook’s Antitrust Cases
Facebook was hit by two separate antitrust complaints this week. One is from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the other is from a…
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A Big-Picture View of the Antitrust Debate
In this month’s issue of Reason magazine, I have a feature-length article on the bipartisan push to revive antitrust enforcement. If you don’t have…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The midnight regulatory rush is on, with one of the year’s highest weekly page counts last week. The 2020 Federal Register is on pace for…
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Walter Williams, 1936-2020
Walter Williams passed away this week at age 84. He was the rare economist to succeed as both an academic and a popular communicator.
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America Really Is Revolutionary
Several scholars I respect, including Daniel Hannan in his 2013 book Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World, have argued that…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Thanksgiving was rather different than most years, and not in a good way. Hopefully, with viable vaccines on the way, it will be back to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Thanksgiving will be a little different this year. With the recent news about promising COVID-19 vaccines, next year’s turkey celebration should be closer to normal.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2020 election is finally, mercifully, over. Barring a surprise in the Georgia Senate runoffs, we will continue to have divided government. This arrangement typically…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2024 election season officially began on Wednesday. The 2020 Federal Register topped 70,000 pages right on election day, and is on pace to be…
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The 2020 Election Actually Had Some Free-Market Victories
Neither presidential candidate has much interest in limited government. But over at National Review, I look at some neglected down-ballot victories…
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Regulatory Relief Needs Better Transparency
Getting rid of #NeverNeeded regulations is one of the most important policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The short-term benefits are obvious, but the…
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James Madison on Why Politics Ruins Everything
Politics has a way of ruining everything. Even kind and intelligent people go through an instant metamorphosis when the conversation changes to politics. Their body…
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America Really Is Revolutionary
Several scholars I respect, including Daniel Hannan in his 2013 book Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World, have argued that…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Los Angeles Dodgers won baseball’s World Series. GDP numbers bounced back in a big way, though the economy is still smaller than…
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Record GDP Numbers Need Context: Good news, but More to Do
Most of the talk about today’s GDP numbers will be related to the election. It shouldn’t. Presidents don’t run the economy; hundreds of millions…
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New CEI Paper: Antitrust Policy in Europe, Lessons for America
Today, CEI is releasing a new paper on antitrust policy in the European Union by Swiss competition commissioner Henrique Schneider. Europe’s approach to competition…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
In the news last week, the Justice Department filed an antitrust case against Google. It is the highest-profile antitrust case since the 1998-2002 Microsoft case.
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Not the Strongest Case: DOJ’s Google Antitrust Complaint
On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust complaint against Google. It marks the beginning of the first major monopolization case since the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a four-day week due to Columbus Day or Indigenous People’s Day—the controversy over which was just one of the things people were outraged…
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Tit-for-Tat Tariffs Don’t Work: Boeing and Airbus Show Why
A 16 year-long aerospace subsidies dispute between the United States and the European Union began another round this week. The U.S. claims that the EU’s…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was another volatile pre-election week. A still-symptomatic President Trump returned to the White House from Walter Reed hospital during prime time. More key staffers…
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The House Judiciary’s Antitrust Reports and Predatory Pricing
It is human nature to fear what we do not understand. And if there is anything politicians do not understand, it is markets. This is…
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Jean-Baptiste Say on Manufacturing Nostalgia and Industrial Policy
In his 1803 A Treatise on Political Economy, Jean-Baptiste Say writes: "Production is the creation, not of matter, but of utility." That captures one of…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis marked the first of what will likely be many October surprises. Congress agreed on one spending bill to avoid another shutdown,…
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Senators Introduce Regulatory Commission Bill
CEI’s approach to regulatory reform has an overarching theme: It is not enough to get rid of this or that harmful regulation. For the benefits…
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New Paper: Antitrust Regulation is #NeverNeeded
My colleague Jessica Melugin and I, along with our former colleague Patrick Hedger, have a new paper out today, “Repeal #NeverNeeded Antitrust Laws that…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Scientists may have found potential chemical evidence of life on Venus—phosphine gas, which in Venusian conditions may well have been produced by anaerobic (non-oxygen-using)…
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Trade News: WTO Rules China Tariffs Violate Rules, Aluminum Tariffs Dropped, No Trade Deal with EU
Usually policy-related news slows down near elections; nobody wants to rock the boat. This has not been the case with trade policy. Three important stories…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a four-day work week due to Labor Day. There were massive fires along the West coast, and Congress declined to pass a $500…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
As Labor Day marked the unofficial end of summer, the unemployment rate went back down to 8.4 percent, and Attorney General Barr announced that the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
COVID-19 deaths passed 200,000 in the United States, and are roughly 1 million worldwide. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing sparked a fresh Supreme…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
COVID-19 deaths passed 200,000 in the United States, and are roughly 1 million worldwide. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing sparked a fresh Supreme…
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Retro Review: William H. McNeill – Plagues and Peoples (1976)
William McNeill was one of the 20th century’s leading big-picture world historians. Interconnectedness is a major theme of his work. Plagues and Peoples applies McNeill’s…
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Retro Reviews: Azar Gat with Alexander Yakobson – Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (2013)
Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism is the rare book that makes the reader see the world differently, permanently.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The last week saw another political convention, another police shooting, and two hurricanes. There was at least one major positive story, though. Polio has finally…