Featured Posts
The Epoch Times
Supreme Court Overturns ‘Chevron Doctrine,’ Curtailing Federal Government Power
The Epoch Times cited CEI’s expert on Chevron doctrine The APA, passed in 1946 after the New Deal era, was critical to one of the…
News Release
Union Members Right to Know Act would protect union-worker rights and promote transparency
Three and a half decades after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Communications Workers of America v. Beck, the rights afforded by that decision are understood…
DC Journal
Point: The Supreme Court Is Empowering Voters
The Supreme Court’s recent term signaled a monumental shift toward liberty as it rolled back the unchecked power of federal agencies and reaffirmed the constitutional…
Search Posts
Forbes
Now More Than Ever, Make ABC ‘s George Stephanopoulos Moderate Presidential Debates
I’ve never been a fan of the “objective media” platitude, preferring competing biases to pretended objectivity. The crucial corollary to that, though, is that…
Playbill
Feds Issue Statement Countering Report About Endangered Times Square Billboards
The theatre magazine Playbill quotes CEI's Marc Scribner on the outdated legislation threatening Times Square's billboards: The Washington Post reported, "The threat to…
Quartz
There’s a Rumor Going Around That New York Was Ordered to Take Down its Times Square Billboards
Quartz quotes Marc Scribner on the outdated legislative threat to Times Square's billboards: Meanwhile, some critics are tracing the unintended consequence straight back…
Volokh Conspiracy
How the Federal Government Could Use Conditional Spending to Force the Removal of Times Square Billboards
The Volokh Conspiracy links to Marc Scribner's writing on the bad laws behind the threat to Times Square's Billboards: Marc Scribner explains why the…
Blog
Deceptive Discrimination Laws
Discrimination may be bad for business, but that doesn’t mean laws banning discrimination are good for business. Often, these laws are like the proverbial Trojan…
Blog
CEI Statements on the Failed Comcast-Time Warner Merger
CEI responded to the news that the Comcast-Time Warner merger failed. You can read more analysis from CEI's Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews here.
Blog
Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger Derailed
Today we’ve learned again that bureaucrats and their enormous kingdoms come before consumer welfare. The collapse of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger merely because of the interference of government,…
Blog
Capitalism Makes a Comeback on Campus
There’s exciting stuff going on in the world of higher education these days for fans of free markets. Just last week, the University of Arizona’s …
Blog
How to Help Tesla and Taxpayers
Policies aimed at reducing auto emissions in California and 10 other states are having a troubling set of unintended consequences, according to a recent editorial at…
Blog
When Kittens Explode
A fascinating Kickstarter funding campaign just ended yesterday, and it was a major one. A new card game with the alarming title of “Exploding…
Blog
Zenefits: A Disruptive Company Fights Back
Sometimes cronyism in the business world takes the form of a company receiving special government favors and subsidies—the now-infamous Solyndra, for example—but sometimes it takes…
Blog
The Empire Strikes Back!
Right-of-center groups have for some time become a bit complacent. Sure the left had the universities, the media, and pop culture—but we had the think…
Blog
Educating Tomorrow’s Business Leaders on Markets and Politics
This weekend I attended a fascinating event at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business on the subject of economic inequality. Prof. …
Blog
Premature Capitulation?
Over the decades I’ve spent in this Heart of Darkness (a.k.a., the bowels of American politics), I’ve learned two lessons that have encouraged the steady…
Study
Free to Prosper
With the start of the 114th Congress comes a fresh opportunity to address the challenges created by a broken government. To kick off this new…
Blog
CEI Reacts to President’s SOTU Address
Lawson Bader reacts to the State of the Union Address: “Whenever a president starts talking about economic inequality and more ways the government can help,…
Blog
Central “Planning” Often Creates Disorder, While the Free Market Provides Consistency
Government planning often contains contradictory elements that provide inconsistent signals for regulated entities about how to behave. For example, the New Deal of the 1930s…
CNS News
Government’s Mixed Messages – ‘Making Marriage the Exception Rather Than the Rule’
Beginning in the 1930’s, the federal government sharply increased central planning of the economy and society. (Perhaps as a consequence, the economy…
Blog
The Future and the Regulated
Lawrence Summers, the enfant terrible of the economics profession, has written a thoughtful column on “Our Loss of Faith in the Future,” noting that…
Blog
Seven Quotes about Communism: Take 2
A few years ago I assembled several quotes about Communism that I thought would make good epitaphs for it. Unfortunately, the ideology has turned…
Washington Examiner
What Lame Ducks Might Do
Iain Murray spoke with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Congress' Lame Duck December Q: With just a handful of legislative days remaining in December, what concerns…
Blog
Thanksgiving and Markets
When the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony celebrated the first Thanksgiving on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, they shared a feast with the Pokanoket tribe, in thanks to…
Blog
Corporate Action against Disease Points Way to Resiliency Strategy for Developing World
In a piece at The Freeman today, I examine how corporations in the developing world have reacted to the threat to their workers from diseases such…
The Freeman
Greedy Corporations Save Lives
With Ebola wreaking havoc across West Africa, news that a private company has virtually eradicated the disease on its extensive property invites sighs of relief.
News Release
New Report “Beyond Gruber” Shows Government Officials Flip-Flopped on Obamacare Subsidies Story
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 – Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published a report by businessman and finance expert Scot Vorse highlighting a growing body…
Study
Top 5 Things Congress Should Consider During Lame-Duck Session
View the document here During Congress’ lame-duck session, both Republicans and Democrats will dig into a number of stalled pieces of legislation…
Human Events
If it Walks Like a Lame Duck
I’ve always found the term “lame duck Congress” an affront to waterfowl everywhere. And it’s odd to boot. Why does it matter if they have…
Blog
In Memoriam: Gordon Tullock
I write this Tuesday night as TV pundits drone on in the background. The Republicans may win control of the Senate, though races are too…
Blog
Gordon Tullock, R.I.P.
Imagine making Nobel-worthy contributions to a discipline in which you had almost no formal training. It’s an amazing feat. Gordon Tullock is one of the…
Blog
Volunteering Violation Vignettes
Did you know it is against the law to volunteer for a for-profit business? The issue has surfaced in a trio of varied settings recently.
Forbes
Hillary Clinton: Businesses Don’t Create Jobs (Just Speaking Fees)
This article was originally published at Forbes on October 26, 2014 Hillary Clinton’s October 24 speech supporting Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Democratic…
Blog
The Tesla File: Government Favors Cut Both Ways
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors has become a fascinating case study in economic freedom in recent years, although the narrative is a complicated one. The…
Products
What Is Plouffe’s Battle Plan?
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s decision to hire former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe raises some interesting questions. Uber, a social network offering consumers an attractive…
Blog
Must Every Product in the World Be Safe Enough for Children?
The New York Times reported Friday on the David-and-Goliath battle of businessman Shihan Qu, the last of the rare earth magnet renegades. Mr. Qu’s…
Human Events
He Who Can, Does. He Who Cannot Takes a Job with a Federal Safety Agency
A former colleague, who lived and worked in the U.S. on a valid work permit, would travel back to Canada periodically to renew the permit.
Blog
Billionaire Diversity: Foreign vs. Domestic
Brookings Institution scholar Darrell West, whose new book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust is being released later this week, has another intriguing graphic…
Blog
STB Reauthorization Bill Threatens Rail Investment
The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has scheduled a markup for tomorrow afternoon of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) Reauthorization Act (S.2777). If…
Human Events
Top-Rated Economies of the World Are Not By Coincidence
Isn’t it odd how we assign human characteristics to inanimate objects? We rank the “friendliest,” “least hospitable,” “most free” regions and countries. We nickname urban…
Blog
Celebrate Billionaire Diversity
Darrell West, a Vice President at the Brookings Institution, has a new book coming out next week on the political influence of the very wealthy,…
Blog
Obama “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” Executive Order Will Punish Firms in Pro-Worker States
Earlier, we discussed President Obama’s recent Executive Order 13,673, which “will allow trial lawyers to extort larger settlements from companies, and enable bureaucratic agencies to extract …
Blog
Duplicative New Affirmative-Action Rule Drives Up Taxpayer Costs and Restricts Competition
Does it make sense to require a park campground operator that has a few hundred employees at 120 different locations to come up with 120…
Blog
Executive Order Pressures Employers to Capitulate to Baseless Demands and Meritless Claims
A July 31 executive order from President Obama, E.O. 13,673, will make it very costly for employers to challenge dubious allegations of wrongdoing against them,…
Human Events
Business Vs. Labor is Really About Cooperation Vs. Confrontation
It’s an age old struggle—more often rhetorical than physical. Usually framed as business vs. labor, it’s really about cooperation vs. confrontation. Since humans could walk…
New York Times Magazine
Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual dinner and CEI president Lawson Bader are mentioned in a New York Times magazine feature article examining the opportunities…
National Review
Obama’s Idea of Transparency
Chris Horner is mentioned in a National Review article about the Obama administration’s lack of transparency: The Internal Revenue Service’s handling of the Lois Lerner…
Investor's Business Daily
States Tire Of Regulatory Overreach, Take Obama EPA To Court
William Yeatman is mentioned in an Investor's Business Daily article discussing why 12 states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency over proposed rules on greenhouse-gas emissions:…
Investor's Business Daily
Big Government Can’t Keep Up In Digital Era
Article by Michael Barone Earlier this week, I was thinking of writing a column about the lying and duplicity of ObamaCare backers who argued that…
Blog
The Let Me Google That for You Act
When it comes to government transparency, more is better. As a general principle, the government should make public as many of its documents as possible…
Austin American Statesman
Texans Should Beware of Internet Sales Tax
Texas is one of the nation’s best states for doing business, according to a recent CNBC survey. Lone Star lawmakers deserve credit for the pro-growth…
Blog
New Study Estimates around $70 billion in Financial Regulatory Costs
Complying with regulations is part of the cost of doing business. For bigger businesses that can absorb those costs (or rather, pass them on to…
Forbes
SEC Crowdfunding Barriers At South By Southwest
In mid-July, South by Southwest (SXSW) – the Austin-based yearly festival that brings together the creators of film, music and technology every March – trekked…
LA Times
Lawyers Challenging Health Subsidies Seek Quick Supreme Court Ruling
Lawyers challenging President Obama's healthcare law filed a quick appeal with the Supreme Court on Thursday, urging justices to take up the issue this fall…
Forbes
Executive Branch Power In The Crosshairs As GOP Readies Vote On Lawsuit Against Obama
Obama favors Executive Orders. Approval ratings seem to suggest the public favors Anti-Executive Orders. Increasingly, “the silken bands of mild government” that…
Human Events
Of Obsolete Regulations and Post-Prohibition Haggis
What comes to mind when you think of Scotland? Bagpipes, certainly, perhaps Scotch whisky, maybe William Wallace (or at least a version that looks suspiciously…
Blog
The American (Business) Revolution
On our nation’s 238th birthday, a flood of public events, political speeches, and TV specials will remind us of the courage of our colonial ancestors…
Blog
Ex-Im’s Invitation to Corruption
When government has a lot of money and power, it is natural for people to curry its favor. It is just as natural for those…
Human Events
1984 was an Enlightening Year
This year marks a quarter century since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And that got me to thinking about how the world has changed…
Blog
Cantor’s Loss a Warning Shot to Supporters of Ex-Im Bank and Johnson-Crapo
Defying conventional wisdom as he often does, Pulitzer prize-winning pundit George F. Will disputed the notion that in the wake of the shocking primary loss…
Forbes
Can Ralph Nader Get Progressives and Libertarians to Make Common Cause?
Eighty years old and still full of piss and vinegar, Ralph Nader should perhaps add honey to his repertoire, as he attempts to woo libertarians,…
The American Spectator
Exporting Solyndras?
The New York Times’ crusading columnist Joe Nocera is an unlikely supporter of crony capitalism. Yet this week he has come out unabashedly in favor of the…
Human Events
Government and Baseball
Have you heard the one about attending a boxing match and a hockey game breaking out? Good jokes always contain elements of truth to…
Business Insider Australia
How A ‘Bunch Of Commies’ Are Forcing The Fortune 500 To Stop Destroying Rain Forests, Overfishing, And Burning Fossil Fuels
Even Greenpeace’s detractors have taken note of the organisation’s newfound potency. Fred Smith, former president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and founder of the…
Forbes
There’s A Way To Pay Off America’s Budget Deficits That Is Easy, And Wholly Painless
Whatever your views on the role of government, one thing is clear: There will be no way to pay for it if the economy doesn’t…
Forbes
Government Employee Unions Tee Up California’s Bankruptcy
Half a Billion Dollars. That’s how much the California Teachers Association and the powerful Service Employees International Union have spent on California politics since 2000.
Forbes
Paul Ryan Mentor Bob Woodson Slams War on Poverty
“Keep doing what yer doing and you’ll keep getting what you got.” Thus spoke Robert Woodson, explaining why the War on Poverty, now entering its…
Forbes
How to Ease the Crushing Costs of Federal Regulations
“You can look at the federal budget and see what we spend. There is nothing like that with respect to regulations. I tabulate the annual…
Forbes
Dueling Visions For Taxing Times: Grover Norquist v. Robert Reich
This is why I got into radio: A pairing of guests representing two competing visions for the nation’s economic future, each making their case in…
Forbes
Will Republican Culture Warriors Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory?
I was recently invited to speak at the annual Conservative Leadership Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, a regional red-meat gathering of the conservative faithful trying to…
News Release
CEI Short Film “I, Pencil” Wins Grand Prize at Manning Centre Competition
WASHINGTON, March 28 –The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) animated short film, “I, Pencil” about the free-market wonders of making the common pencil won first…
Forbes
Can Booming Dubai Remind America How To Grow Again?
If you despair for America, visit Dubai. If you fear our nation’s best days are behind us, visit Dubai. If you believe American entrepreneurship is…
Forbes
Can Silicon Valley Sic Schumpeterian Disruption On Bloated City Governments?
It’s one thing to ship your tax money off to Washington, resigned to the fact that you have little control over the distant bureaucracy that…
Forbes
The Way It Was Under Walter Cronkite: We Were Starved For Media
“And that’s the way it is,” intoned Walter Cronkite, the “most trusted man in America,” at the end of each news broadcast. It seems…
Forbes
Acton Academy: Socrates’ Antidote for Government School Hemlock
Only someone in deep denial, or in total thrall to teachers’ union propaganda, believes our inner city public schools are anything more than dropout factories.
Forbes
10 Ways To Dodge The Mess We Baby Boomers Are Leaving The Millennials
The Greatest Generation bequeathed Baby Boomers a nation on the rise. After saving Western Civilization from fascism, they rebuilt a war-torn world, powered an economic…
Forbes
White House Income Equality Agenda Makes War On Progress
In tonight’s State of the Union Address, Mr. Obama will attempt to shake off the most disastrous year of his presidency by doubling down on…
Forbes
The Antigua Forum: Exporting A Different Kind of Latin American Revolution
Call it the “Free Market Davos.” The Antigua Forum, sponsored by Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala, finished its third annual conference last week. For three…
Forbes
Anatomy of an NPR Hatchet Job, Target: Oil & Gas
“On-The-Job Deaths Spiking As Oil Drilling Quickly Expands” screams a supposed National Public Radio exposé on the “terrible price” we’re paying for the fracking…
Forbes
2013: The Year The Progressive Narrative Collided With Reality
When it comes to crafting winning political narratives, progressives have a natural advantage over conservatives. That’s because progressives have a free hand to project rosy…
Forbes
Obama to Health Insurance Companies: Merry Christmas. Now, Drop Dead.
Insurance is a complicated product. Even President Obama figured that out. Hundreds of highly trained actuaries spend thousands of hours assembling risk pools to determine premium levels,…
The American Spectator
Santa Capitalism
We should call it the “Great Fact,” argues University of Illinois at Chicago economist Deirdre McCloskey. “It” is the Industrial Revolution that, starting in Great…
Human Events
23 and Me for You and Me
My son’s birth is among my most treasured memories. I knew immediately his arrival had transformed my life. But, the joy of that memory comes…
Human Events
The Battle of Two Hedgehogs
As it happened, Simon won the bet. Because of his victory, he became a conservative hero. He died in 1998, but he continues to be…
Forbes
The Knockout Game Goes Viral, The Hunger Games It’s Not
Enthralled with the movie saga of starving and oppressed young heroes rebelling against brutal government tyranny? Then what do you make of gangs of inner-city…
Forbes
Battling For The Heart And Soul Of America’s Political Parties
To our progressive friends, it seemed like a century of advocating for government-sponsored universal health care reached fruition when the Affordable Care Act became the law…
Forbes
Why Obama’s Healthcare.gov Will Never Work As Specified
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Thus answered the HAL 9000 computer in the classic Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space…
Human Events
Obama, Father of all Czars
Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution states: No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States[.] But when George…
Human Events
Obama’s Brinkmanship
We all remember the term “brinkmanship” from the Cold War, coined by President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. In an interview in Life…
Forbes
Is Eric Holder Playing Don Corleone To Jamie Dimon’s Bonasera?
As Don Corleone said to Bonasera in The Godfather’s iconic opening scene, “Some day, and that day may never come, I’ll ask a service of you.” For…
Forbes
The Land Of The Free Is Now A Nation Of Sheep, Wolves, Pigs And Sloths
No, this is not another diatribe about the futility of many gun control laws and the geographic correlation between the level of gun crime and…
Human Events
In Name Only
Traipsing through Dulles Airport the other day, my eyes were drawn to a series of wall poster advertisements. Each one featured a supposed “foreign aid…
Human Events
Converting the Unconvertible
Here’s a thought experiment: What words come to mind with the following statements? I grew up in Marin County, Calif., during the late 1960s and…
Human Events
No Bipartisanship, Please
We’ve heard it a million times: What Washington needs is more bipartisanship, more cooperation among the parties … like the old days. To which I…
Forbes
President Obama’s ‘Syrialoquy’: To Bomb, Or Not To Bomb
To bomb, or not to bomb, that is the suggestion; Whether ’tis nobler in the polls to suffer The Slings and Arrows of…
Forbes
Betting on the Apocalypse
ONE day in October 1990, the iconoclastic economist Julian L. Simon walked out to get the mail at his house in the Washington suburb of…
News Release
Ronald Coase Dies at 102; CEI Releases Interview Footage of the Nobel-Winning Economist
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 3, 2013 – Ronald Coase, who won the 1991 Nobel prize in economics for his work on transaction costs and property rights,…
Forbes
Ronald Coase Was The Greatest Of The Many Great University Of Chicago Economists
Ronald Coase (1910-2013), the greatest of the Chicago School economists in my view, died this week. Yet, his work lives on. If it gains the…
National Review
The Pinnacle of Rent-Seeking
In this post, Hans Bader of CEI explains how Georgetown Law School has figured out how to maximize its haul of federal-financial-aid money. You’ve almost…
Forbes
We’re In A Cultural War Between The Forces Of Economic Dynamism And Stasis
In a recent column, I noted that our tribal ancestors viewed entrepreneurs with suspicion. In their view, entrepreneurs were too willing to violate…
Forbes
The Founders’ Greatest Fears About Democracy Are Playing Out
Our Founders’ greatest fear that pure democracy would inevitably destroy itself is being played out in two distinct dramas, both headed toward the same ending.
Forbes
Want To Revive Glass-Steagall? Try This Wall Of Separation Instead
A debate is raging on the left, the right, and even in libertarian circles on the best way to escape from the Too-Big-To-Fail quagmire. But…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Richard Morrison
Senior Fellow
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Capitalism and Free Enterprise
Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
- Automobiles and Roads
- Aviation
- Business and Government
Ryan Young
Senior Economist
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform