Economics

May 22, 2019

Rev. Ben Johnson on ‘Donald Trump’s one-front trade war’

In the U.S. edition of The Spectator, Rev. Ben Johnson looks at how President Donald J. Trump eased tariffs on North American and European trade partners so he could ratchet up pressure on China. Continue Reading...

May 20, 2019

Is Facebook a monopoly the government should break up?

Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and co-chairman of the Economic Security Project, has recently written an impassioned plea in the New York Times calling for the government to break up Facebook. Continue Reading...

May 16, 2019

Yet another example of how the Vatican misunderstands America…and economics

After almost twenty years in Rome, I’ve learned not to insist too much on the Vatican reading the USA with any kind of accuracy, so I usually don’t feel the need to comment on every little misunderstanding coming from the Roman Curia. Continue Reading...

May 10, 2019

Global poverty reduction slows – but there’s a fix

For the past many years, the news about extreme poverty around the globe has been extremely encouraging. The number of people living on $1.90 a day (2011 PPP), which the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, has been falling for decades. Continue Reading...

May 09, 2019

Rev. Robert Sirico on ‘The Late-Scholastic and Austrian Link to Modern Catholic Economic Thought’

As Acton’s librarian I can’t help but be immersed in the history of the Institute. I regularly stumble upon thought-provoking material from well before I began my work here in the late 2000’s which is itself a continuing education. Continue Reading...

May 08, 2019

How we benefit from billionaires

A common claim made by those who focus on economic inequality is that if business people have acquired massive wealth they must have done so at the expense of others. The solution, they claim, would be a tax on wealth that allows could be redistributed to the working poor. Continue Reading...

May 07, 2019

Is behavioral economics blind to its blindness?

I find some of the work of behavioral economists, especially that of Daniel Kahneman to be very interesting and important. Thinking Fast and Slow is essential reading. His distinctions between what he calls Type I and Type II thinking is very insightful, and the broad critique that human beings don’t always act like rational maximizers is a correct. Continue Reading...

May 07, 2019

Why capital markets matter

Of all the many components of a market economy, I don’t think that any are as misunderstood — or reviled — as capital markets. They have never been held in high esteem, and the financial crisis of 2008 did enormous damage to their already low reputation. Continue Reading...

April 30, 2019

Noodles in Nigeria: When private business breeds economic development

In the West’s various efforts to alleviate global poverty, we continue to see the promotion of top-down solutions at the expense of bottom-up enterprises and institutions. Yet despite the setbacks and slowdowns caused by various governments and foreign aid, the entrepreneurs and workers on the ground aren’t sitting idly by. Continue Reading...

April 29, 2019

Grand Rapids doesn’t need publicly funded hotels

Grand Rapids, home to the Acton Institute headquarters, is frequently ranked as one of the best cities to live in America. In 2018, Headlight Data ranked the city the seventh fastest growing economy in the U.S., Continue Reading...

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