Featured Posts
The-A-Word
People can be authoritarian about anything. That includes liberals and freelance busting. This Q&A with Luke Conway explains why.
The-A-Word cited CEI’s expert on the rise of authoritarianism I was thinking about all this when Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian…
Epoch Times
Congress’ Post-Chevron Dilemma: Take Back Power From Agencies or Concede It for Good
Epoch Times cited CEI’s expert on excessive government regulation When federal regulatory expert Wayne Crews was asked recently what Congress should do about excessive government…
Blog
Government efficiency commission: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Donald Trump is proposing a new government efficiency commission and he wants Elon Musk to lead it. Like most campaign proposals, it does not…
Search Posts
Blog
“Scientocracy” Highlights Problematic Incentives in Government Research
Yesterday CEI put on an excellent event on science policy on Capitol Hill on the new book Scientocracy: The Tangled Web of Public Science and…
Blog
New Analysis on Tax and Regulatory Issues for Carsharing Companies
Our friend and Tech Policy Podcast host Ash Kazaryan recently recorded a fascinating interview with Reason Foundation Policy Analyst Spence Purnell on how Florida (and…
Blog
Amazon Documentary Shows How Consumers Benefit
PBS’s Frontline aired its documentary, “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos,” last night. While the tone of the piece was markedly suspicious,…
Blog
Antitrust Enforcement in 4-D
Competition is an ongoing discovery process. The reason firms exist is not to enable or restrict competition. It is to reduce transaction costs. There is…
National Review
Them the People
National Review cites senior fellow Iain Murray on democratic socialism: Murray, talking about his forthcoming book The Socialist Temptation at a CEI event in New Orleans, describes the inherent tension…
Blog
NBC/WSJ Poll: “Socialism” Not So Popular After All
NBC News and The Wall Street Journal just released a new poll that finds capitalism isn’t underwater with the American public just yet. Registered voters…
Blog
Economic Planning and Dead Mall Legends
The kind of American chain stores and retail formats that dominated the second half of the 20th century have fallen on hard times in the…
Blog
Are the Climate and Capitalism at War?
Many contemporary environmentalists share two important beliefs: a) that anthropogenic climate change is the biggest threat to the future of humanity and b) that a…
Blog
Dog Bites Man in Davos
J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon recently said that “most state-owned enterprises don’t do a particularly good job.” The head of the world’s largest bank…
The Atlantic
Abuse of Power Is a Dangerous Standard for Democrats to Play With
Almost the minute after the White House released its 110-page brief for the Senate impeachment trial, careful observers noticed a contradiction between the White House counsel’s…
Blog
How Antitrust Intervention Backfires
Antitrust policy interventions into the market rarely work as intended.
Letters
CEI Joins Coalition Letter on Proposed Rule on Securing the ICTS Supply Chain
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, representing a diverse coalition of taxpayer and consumer advocacy groups, we write urging you to withdraw or significantly amend…
C-Span
VIDEO: Patrick Hedger Discusses Efforts to Regulate “Big Tech”
Research Fellow Patrick Hedger joins C-Span to discuss efforts to regulate “big tech” companies.
Blog
Best Books of 2019: Year of Vindication for Mother of George Washington
August 25 of this past year was the 230th anniversary of the death of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of the first president of the…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: In Defense of Openness
Most policy proposals for fighting poverty are zero-sum. The best way to help the poor, the argument goes, is to take from the rich. Van…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: Alienated America by Tim Carney
Tim Carney’s new book on social alienation and U.S. politics, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, raises the bar for Trump-era political…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: Big Business by Tyler Cowen
Cowen argues that most people underestimate the amount of good that big businesses do. They make possible affordable communications, books, culture and art (and the…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: Humanomics by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson
Smith and Wilson combine insights from their experimental economics research with insights about human character from Adam Smith’s "Wealth of Nations" and especially his 1759 book "The Theory…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: Expert Failure by Roger Koppl
Koppl uses the role of experts to explain the difference between approaching social problems from the top down versus from the bottom up. Koppl defines an…
Blog
Weighing Bad Capitalism and Good Socialism
Recently economics professor Walter Block of Loyola University New Orleans wrote a great op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “Bad Capitalism and Good Socialism.”…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: The Enlightened Capitalists by James O’Toole
James O’Toole, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, has assembled an impressive collective history of dozens of innovative—and…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
How did a joint stock company founded in Elizabethan England come to replace the glorious Mughal Empire of India, ruling that great land for a…
Blog
Best Books of 2019: The Narrow Corridor
Predatory governments with high corruption, that don’t respect political and economic freedoms, are extractive. Countries with these sorts of institutions tend to be both poor…
Blog
Department of Justice Wrong to Block Sabre Acquisition of Farelogix
On January 27th, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) will attempt to block travel technology company Sabre Corporation from purchasing communications protocol innovator Farelogix, Inc. This will be the…
The Atlantic
Democrats Have Failed to Prove Their Case Against Trump
The House Judiciary Committee has published articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. Though potentially damning, the particular charges—abuse of power in connection with Ukraine…
Blog
Attorneys General Shouldn’t Hold Mergers Hostage
Last week the attorneys general of Texas and Nevada announced the withdrawal of their support of a multistate lawsuit to block the merger of cellular telephone…
Blog
Negative Interest Rates’ Impact on Public Pensions
One of the main responsibilities of pension fund managers is to work to maximize investment returns in order to grow the plan’s assets and thus…
NewsMax
CFPB Litigation Won’t Help Student Borrowers
The efforts of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Kathy Kraninger have gone a long way in reversing egregious Obama-era actions that plagued the agency,…
Blog
Corporate ‘Social Responsibility’ Must Be Voluntary, Not Mandated
The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) just wrapped an event on corporate governance titled “The Role of a Corporation: The Shareholder versus Stakeholder Debate,” and it…
Cato Journal
Review of “The Enlightened Capitalists”
James O’Toole, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, has assembled an impressive collective history of dozens of innovative—and…
Blog
Ex-Im Reauthorization Vote Today in the House
The House of Representatives will vote on reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank today. Even if Ex-Im is reauthorized, the fight over it has already yielded a…
The Washington Times
Congress Can Fix Legal Marijuana Business Banking Problem
Violent and property crime rates have decreased over the past 25 years, so it’s telling that instances of robbery or burglary against one sort of…
Blog
VIDEO: Growth and Opportunity in the Beehive State
I’ve been interested in the work at the Center for Growth and Opportunity (CGO) at Utah State University for some time now, and I was…
Blog
The Unmeasured Costs of Federal Agency Liberation from Congress, Self-Funding, and Permanence
In considering the overall costs of regulation, little attention is given to the intractability of the administrative state itself. Congress shows little appetite for restraining…
News Release
House Hearing on Proposed Cryptocurrency Premature, Focus Should Be on Regulatory Barriers to Innovation
Ahead of a House Financial Services Committee hearing focused on Libra, a new cryptocurrency proposed by Facebook and other entities, Competitive Enterprise Institute experts John…
News Release
Supreme Court to Hear Lawsuit on CFPB Unconstitutionality: CEI Statements
On news today that the United States Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, CEI experts said they were…
News Release
CEI Commends Executive Action Restricting Use of Regulatory Dark Matter
The White House today announced President Trump will sign two executive orders aimed at stopping the practice of agencies using guidance documents to effectively implement…
News Release
Is Capitalism Destroying Democracy?
A new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute examines that question at a time when progressives increasingly assert democracy in the United States is being…
Blog
VIDEO: Life Is Getting Better
Despite prominent headlines to the contrary, the world is not actually falling apart. As our friends at places like Human Progress tirelessly work to remind…
Blog
Antitrust Astroturf Activism
Not too long ago, I pointed out that antitrust regulation is often gamed by special interests and rent-seekers. A recent story in The Wall Street…
The Wall Street Journal
Free-Marketeers Have Taken Social Conservatives for Granted
For many free-market advocates, the recent conservative dalliance with noncapitalist policies has been as stunning as it has been swift. While President Trump’s antipathy to…
The Atlantic
The Problem With the State-Level Investigation of Google
The battlefield is getting crowded. European antitrust enforcers have been fighting America’s tech giants for years. In the U.S., both the Justice Department and Federal…
Blog
VIDEO: Prosperity Is More Than Wages
In a new video for the PolicyEd channel, economist Russ Roberts takes on the popular—though misleading—narrative that ordinary working Americans haven’t made any real economic…
CNS News
Ex-Im Bank Reauthorization Is Sadly All But Inevitable
Congress is back from its annual August recess. One of the top items on its agenda is reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, which has an expiring…
Blog
Policy Circle 4th Annual Leadership Summit Coming to Chicago
There are a lot of useful conferences, meetings, and conventions that fill our calendars, and one that we're especially looking forward to this year is the Policy Circle’s…
Blog
Automaker Antitrust Investigation Wrong Way to Fight Cartels
Cartels need government support because they contain the seeds of their own destruction. Self-interested companies acting selfishly naturally undo their own cartels.
Blog
Lead State in Big Tech Antitrust Suit Misleadingly Inflates Google’s Size
In The Wall Street Journal today, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is spearheading a multistate antitrust investigation into Google, made an egregious error.
Blog
Study on Export-Import Bank: Repeal Is Best, Other Reforms Can Help
The Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization by September 30. It should be shut down, as I’ve pointed out before, but reauthorization will almost certainly…
News Release
New CEI Paper Calls on Congress to Close or Reform Ex-Im Bank
A new paper released today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) calls on Congress to either allow the U.S. Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank to close entirely…
Blog
State Attorneys General Launch Antitrust Investigations, Forget ‘Relevant Market’ Fallacy
Facebook and Google are facing separate antitrust investigations from publicity-seeking state attorneys general from both parties. New York’s Democratic attorney general is heading a joint…
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