One of the flaws of Tory modernisation was that it was never interested enough in pounds and pence. Social issues, the environment and public service reform were what the modernisers specialised in, not economics. But tonight’s Macmillan lecture by Nick Boles, one of the most intellectually influential modernisers, is devoted to the subject of how Britain’s global competiveness in the ...

I really liked that first Madsen Pirie short economics video, about the subjectivity of value, flagged up here. Now number 2 has emerged, on the closely related topic of price control. I happened upon this second video here, which would suggest that these things are getting around and being noticed. They should. The short video lecture is the perfect medium for Madsen. Many is the time that I have...

The former EU commissioner’s acolytes will play a crucial role at the summit, and include David Cameron’s Europe adviser and deputy leader Nick Clegg

When Fred Bergsten founded the Institute for International Economics in Washington, Ronald Reagan had just entered the White House and Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union

Is this video the 21st century version of a photocopied 1980s Libertarian Alliance pamphlet? It contains Madsen Pirie explaining an economics concept in under three minutes. He tells me that he is going to do 20 videos, one a week. Strangely, outside of lectures held by the ASI and IEA, there isn't much video coming out of the UK libertarian scene. Over in the States, all sorts of organisatio...

The occasion of Peter Tatchell’s 60 th birthday. Man’s a loon of course. His various forays into the world of economics have been laughably ignorant. Certain of his campaigns have been based upon very, very, odd readings of the world. Yet, as Sellars and Yeatman didn’t put it, he’s not been rong but romatic, nor

This is just too good a comment to pass up. I’ve had to study Public Choice Theory as part of my economics degree, and it really is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever read, and sums up how economics is not a science, but simply a pseudoscientific enterprise designed to promote the interests of

As Brian Micklethwait informed us ahead of time, Detlev Schlichter appeared on the BBC Radio 4 programme Start The Week on Monday. A podcast of the programme can be downloaded. Remember that all of this is being talked about on the BBC, on Radio 4, which I imagine is listened to by lots of Guardian and Independent readers. Austrian economics is now Being Talked About, as Brian might point out. The...

"Certainly there is a need for free-market economics to be rescued from those who distort and discredit it, but that is the argument that must be made: that this system has delivered mass prosperity (and the self-determination that comes with it) on a scale unprecedented in human history, and that it deserves to be saved from the spoilers." Janet Daley, writing with justified scorn about those peo...

Austrian economic theory describes how purposive action by fallible human beings unintentionally generates a grand, complex, and orderly market process. An additional ethical step is required to pronounce the market process good. Economic theory per se cannot recommend but only explain markets. This is what Ludwig von Mises meant when he insisted that Austrian economics is value-free. Anyone of an...