Art Carden
Senior Fellow
Art Carden is a Senior Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is also an Associate Professor of Economics at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.
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A Pandemic Reading List
“‘May you live in interesting times’ is an apocryphal ancient curse. These times are certainly interesting, to say the least, and the best way to deal with them is to follow the Biblical exhortation in Proverbs chapter 4 to get wisdom, understanding, and insight. You’re not likely to find them on cable news and Twitter,…
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Walmart’s “Buy American” Commitment Won’t Make America Great Again
“In its almost sixty years of existence, Walmart has revolutionized American retail and raised American standards of living by innovating in shipping, selling, and shopping. They certainly have the potential to continue doing so–but paying extra for stuff just because it was produced in the United States won’t help them or their customers in the…
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Google is Not a Monopoly
“Google is a lot of things. Maybe they have become evil, as the left would tell us when alleging that YouTube’s algorithms are unwittingly supporting, galvanizing, and expanding the alt-right or as the right would tell us when alleging that Google’s search results are rigged to advance a progressive agenda. The charge of “monopoly” doesn’t…
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Voters’ Incentives and Terrible Public Policy
“In about a month, Americans will elect a new President and a new Congress. In our ideal world, they would do so by very carefully weighing the costs and benefits of different policies and choosing the combinations that they reasonably believe to be in everyone’s best interests. In the world we inhabit, though, they will…
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James M. Buchanan’s Normative Vision Fifteen Years Later
“Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative lays out a subtle, complex, and principled vision for a functioning society of equals. Autonomy and reciprocity, he argues, are necessary for peace, order, and prosperity, but at the same time he doesn’t see it as his role to deconstruct society and rebuild it along these lines. Buchanan…
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The Aristocracy of Pull
“The reader of Political Capitalism will be pulled away from blackboard models of perfect worlds we can imagine, but they will come away with a better understanding of the world we actually inhabit.” ~ Art Carden
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Free to Choose After Forty Years
“Free to Choose holds up very well even after forty years. Friedman’s analysis still holds, and it’s interesting to see (for example) how the rhetoric of the opposition to educational choice hasn’t really changed. Free to Choose does more than show that freedom works. It explains why, and it does so memorably.” ~ Art Carden
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What’s the Right Mix of Money and Drugs for Your Employees?
“There isn’t a ‘right’ combination of wages, benefits, and other perquisites, and the pattern of things that ‘work’ for people is not planned by a central authority. It emerges from trial and error in the market.” ~ Art Carden
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So You Want to Overthrow the State: Ten Questions for Aspiring Revolutionaries
“A course that asks students to put themselves in the positions of aspiring revolutionaries and to prepare their own revolutionary manifestoes is extremely creative. I think it’s the kind of course from which students can benefit mightily–if, of course, they ask the right questions.” ~ Art Carden
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The Resilience and Brilliance of the World’s Poorest: The Case of Pagpag
“The problem isn’t that the world’s poorest don’t work hard. The problem is that they work hard in societies where restrictions on economic freedom throttle growth.” ~ Art Carden
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•
A Pandemic Reading List
“‘May you live in interesting times’ is an apocryphal ancient curse. These times are certainly interesting, to say the least, and the best way to deal with them is to follow the Biblical exhortation in Proverbs chapter 4 to get wisdom, understanding, and insight. You’re not likely to find them on cable news and Twitter,…
-
•
Walmart’s “Buy American” Commitment Won’t Make America Great Again
“In its almost sixty years of existence, Walmart has revolutionized American retail and raised American standards of living by innovating in shipping, selling, and shopping. They certainly have the potential to continue doing so–but paying extra for stuff just because it was produced in the United States won’t help them or their customers in the…
-
•
Google is Not a Monopoly
“Google is a lot of things. Maybe they have become evil, as the left would tell us when alleging that YouTube’s algorithms are unwittingly supporting, galvanizing, and expanding the alt-right or as the right would tell us when alleging that Google’s search results are rigged to advance a progressive agenda. The charge of “monopoly” doesn’t…
-
•
Voters’ Incentives and Terrible Public Policy
“In about a month, Americans will elect a new President and a new Congress. In our ideal world, they would do so by very carefully weighing the costs and benefits of different policies and choosing the combinations that they reasonably believe to be in everyone’s best interests. In the world we inhabit, though, they will…
-
•
James M. Buchanan’s Normative Vision Fifteen Years Later
“Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative lays out a subtle, complex, and principled vision for a functioning society of equals. Autonomy and reciprocity, he argues, are necessary for peace, order, and prosperity, but at the same time he doesn’t see it as his role to deconstruct society and rebuild it along these lines. Buchanan…
-
•
The Aristocracy of Pull
“The reader of Political Capitalism will be pulled away from blackboard models of perfect worlds we can imagine, but they will come away with a better understanding of the world we actually inhabit.” ~ Art Carden
-
•
Free to Choose After Forty Years
“Free to Choose holds up very well even after forty years. Friedman’s analysis still holds, and it’s interesting to see (for example) how the rhetoric of the opposition to educational choice hasn’t really changed. Free to Choose does more than show that freedom works. It explains why, and it does so memorably.” ~ Art Carden
-
•
What’s the Right Mix of Money and Drugs for Your Employees?
“There isn’t a ‘right’ combination of wages, benefits, and other perquisites, and the pattern of things that ‘work’ for people is not planned by a central authority. It emerges from trial and error in the market.” ~ Art Carden
-
•
So You Want to Overthrow the State: Ten Questions for Aspiring Revolutionaries
“A course that asks students to put themselves in the positions of aspiring revolutionaries and to prepare their own revolutionary manifestoes is extremely creative. I think it’s the kind of course from which students can benefit mightily–if, of course, they ask the right questions.” ~ Art Carden
-
•
The Resilience and Brilliance of the World’s Poorest: The Case of Pagpag
“The problem isn’t that the world’s poorest don’t work hard. The problem is that they work hard in societies where restrictions on economic freedom throttle growth.” ~ Art Carden