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DC Journal
EPA Should Consider the Harm of Regulating Greenhouse Gases
Even for the least essential choices we make in our daily lives, such as what we should have for dinner, we consider the pros and…

News Release
Consumer sentiment down nearly 30 percent, tariffs and inflation to blame: CEI analysis
Consumer sentiment is down nearly 30 percent according to an April survey conducted by the University of Michigan. CEI senior economist Ryan Young…

News Release
Producer Price Index fell by 0.5 percent in April, price increases and lower demand likely cause: CEI analysis
The Producer Price Index for April shows the seasonally adjusted final demand fell by 0.5 percent. CEI senior economist Ryan Young says the…
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Blog
The Government Makes a Terrible Boyfriend
He’s from the government, and he’s here to help. That’s the comic premise of this summer’s best YouTube video series, “Love Gov,” from the…
Blog
Mount Vernon Cheers: A Song to Commemorate “I, Whiskey”
Our Indiegogo campaign for CEI’s new documentary “I Whiskey” is closing soon. So far, we have raised almost $75,000, but it’s not over yet.
Blog
William Faulkner Said it Best: “Civilization Begins with Distillation”
"Making whiskey is but one piece of the Great Story of Spirits. The Big Picture is the story of incremental progress, of continual innovation by…
Blog
Why Thieves Hate Free Markets
Don Boudreaux over at Café Hayek has just given a 2015 boost to a smart 2012 video from Learn Liberty on social cooperation in…
Blog
The FTC Targets Apple Music: Part II
This is the second in a series of essays on the FTC’s investigation of Apple Music. Part I discussed the reason for the FTC’s investigation as…
Blog
The FTC Targets Apple Music: Part I
When launching a new product, the goal is to create excitement, as any company will tell you. But Apple’s newly launched music streaming service, Apple…
Blog
Bastiat Society Rallies Business Leaders Together
My venerable colleague Fred Smith and I just returned from the Hoosier State, where we were honored to be guests of the Indianapolis chapter of the …
WND
The Obama-Clinton Cloward-Piven legacy
The WND cites CEI`s Bill Frezza on Obama`s welfare reforms: In his Forbes article, “Deconstructing Obamanomics: What is the Real Goal?,” Bill Frezza, an MIT…
Blog
The Persistent Truth of Income Mobility
There’s a lot being written these days about income (and wealth) inequality, and how a free market economy allegedly exacerbates the divide between the rich and…
Blog
What Cartoons Can Teach Us about Capitalism
The Freeman has an excellent article by FEE advisory board member Robert Anthony Peters on economic lessons in popular culture—in this case focusing on the wealthiest…
Blog
Do Conservatives Really Care about the Poor?
American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks has a new book out this week, The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous…
Blog
Join the “I, Whiskey” Team
The Competitive Enterprise Institute's newest film project, I, Whiskey: The Spirit of the Market, is currently in production, and you can help make it…
Blog
Highlights of FreedomFest 2015
The happy warriors of CEI have returned from our sojourn to Las Vegas and the excitement of FreedomFest 2015: Discover the New American Dream. The…
The College Fix
Two-thirds of subsidized financial aid swallowed up by tuition increases, Federal Reserve Bank study finds
The College Fix quotes CEI`s Hans Bader on federal student aid programs: The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Hans Bader cites…
Blog
Advocating Free Trade, Not Foreign Aid for the World’s Poverty
A Review of the Poverty Cure Documentary Series Poverty Cure is a six part documentary series directed and hosted by Michael Matheson Miller, produced by…
Blog
2015 CEI Dinner Movie: The Magnificent 7
Complete with cowboy boots, wagon wheels, lamps made out of whiskey bottles, and wanted posters of the most “notorious” U.S. regulators—if you’re talking to a…
Blog
Excerpts from Carly Fiorina’s Address at CEI’s Annual Dinner
Keynote address by business and nonprofit leader Carly Fiorina delivered at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner on June 11, 2015. Excerpts from text as…
Forbes
Memo To Presidential Campaigns — Federal Regulation Matters More Than Spending
President Barack Obama’s federal budget proposal for FY 2016 sought $3.999 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending; the Republican alternative a little…
Blog
Politics vs. Principle: Export-Import Bank Edition
On the merits, the case for closing the Export-Import Bank is a slam-dunk. This has made life difficult for the bank’s supporters, especially since the…
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…