Found 1,381 search results for keyword: label

[This article is chapter 5 of Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities. Now available at Amazon and in the Mises Store.] One of the most consistent and enthusiastic defenders of human rights and “natural rights” in the twentieth century was the economist and historian Murray Rothbard. A self-described libertarian, Rothbard would also have fit in well among the more radical liberals of the nineteenth...

Read More »

According to modern portfolio theory (MPT), financial asset prices always fully reflect all available and relevant information, and any adjustment to new information is virtually instantaneous. Thus, asset prices respond only to the unexpected part of information since the expected portion is already embedded in prices. For example, if the central bank raises interest rates by 0.5 percent, and if market participants anticipated this action, asset...

Read More »

To achieve sustainability, the world needs stability. Yet two-thirds of countries are facing major economic, political, and social problems. Most of them are also experiencing ethnic or civil conflicts, mass migration and poverty crises. The question is whether the UN's sustainability agenda can succeed in the context of ongoing or simmering conflicts. Paradoxically, preventing wars and conflicts isn't one of the UN's seventeen sustainable...

Read More »

There are many reasons to support the breaking up states into smaller pieces. This is done via secession, and acts of secession produce smaller states. All else being equal, smaller states tend to be richer and they tend to have lower taxes. They tend to exercise less power over the resident population—because it's easier for people to escape smaller states than larger ones. Moreover, setting these tangible and practical considerations aside,...

Read More »

According to the post-Keynesian School of Economics economist Hyman Minsky, the capitalist economy has an inherent tendency to develop instability that culminates in a severe economic crisis. The key mechanism that pushes the economy toward a crisis is the accumulation of debt. According to Minsky, during “good” times businesses in profitable sectors of the economy are rewarded for increasing their debt levels. The more one borrows, the more profit...

Read More »

In May this year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated outstanding US government debt next October to be $27,388 billion. By the end of the first quarter of the fiscal year, it will exceed $34,000 billion. It is soaring out of control, and perhaps it is not surprising that the CBO has not updated its forecasts with this debt uncertainty. The CBO also assumed that debt interest costs last year would be $663 billion, when it ended up being $980...

Read More »

Many people believe that a general increase in stock prices is an important factor in economic growth. However, this is a questionable observation. The view that the stock market drives economic growth originates from the observation that changes in stock prices precede changes in economic data. We suggest that various economic indicators are heavily influenced by money supply, which also drives stock prices. The price of something is the amount of...

Read More »

Many economists believe that inflationary expectations cause general increases in prices. For instance, if there is a sharp increase in oil prices, people will form higher inflationary expectations that set in motion general increases in the prices of other goods and services. According to the former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, “Undoubtedly, the state of inflation expectations greatly influences actual inflation and thus the central...

Read More »