Clark Packard Since the late 1970s, when Chinese president Deng Xiaoping initiated some market‐oriented liberalization, the country has been on an upward economic trajectory. As documented by my colleague Jim Dorn in a recent essay for Cato’s Defending Globalization project, these reforms yielded substantial dividends. It is estimated
Data is sometimes referred to as today’s most valuable commodity. Given the technologically focused world around us, data is generated with almost everything we do or consume, whether you use Apple Pay to purchase goods from a retail outfit or use a credit card for
Adam N. Michel The Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC) is a refundable payroll tax credit—equivalent to a cash payment of up to $26,000 per employee—for businesses and nonprofits with significant pandemic‐related revenue declines or shuttered by government orders. The payments were intended to reward companies for keeping
Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett On April 10, 2023, Congress terminated the three‐year‐long COVID-19 national emergency—one of the most expensive emergency declarations ever at more than $7 trillion in spending, as reported by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Heritage Foundation. Whenever such emergency declarations
This past weekend, the world witnessed absolute barbarism play out as Hamas agents brutally targeted Israeli civilians. The State of Israel, suffering from a historic failure to protect its residents, has predictably responded with major military operations in the Gaza strip. The result is a
While central banks use administered interest rates in hopes of emulating the natural rate, these efforts are always going to fail. Without free markets, there is no natural rate. Original Article: The Central Bank Policy Interest Rate vs the Natural Rate
The term “roundabout” is not normally associated with efficiency, unless you’re an economist. Yet roundabout methods—when applied to production—are the key to prosperity. Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the great Austrian economist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, provided examples illustrating how this idea works. Consider
Vanessa Brown Calder This week, Claudia Goldin, the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University, was announced as the 2023 Nobel Prize winner. Goldin’s work spans a variety of topics, including women’s labor force participation and economic history, education, immigration, and technological change. But among the
Some free-market advocates are pushing for dollarization in Argentina. But the devastating US sanctions against Panama in 1989 show us how dollarization helps the US exercise more hegemonic power over foreign economies. Original Article: Dollarization Puts Foreign Economies at the Mercy of the US Regime
This week, Hillary Clinton publicly proposed “formal deprogramming” for MAGA enthusiasts, piling on a repeated President Biden theme of trying to deal with “an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs of our democracy. The MAGA movement.” The nation recently discovered that the FBI