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Articles by Jacob Viner
Justice and Exchange in Commercial Society
wealth of nations self-interest impropriety exchange administration of justice August 19, 2025 The Wealth of Nations. An overview and covering the introduction in Book One. This episode walks through key ideas in Book I, including the famous examples of the pin factory and the woolen coat, used to illustrate the productivity gains from the division of labor.
Why Industrial Policy Is (Almost) Always a Bad Idea (with Scott Sumner)
0:37 Intro. [Recording date: November 12, 2024.] Russ Roberts: Today is November 12th, 2024. My guest is economist Scott Sumner. His Substack is the Pursuit of Happiness. This is Scott's sixth appearance on the program. He was last here in April of 2015 talking about interest rates. Our topic for today is his essay on government intervention versus free markets, and industrial policy generally.
National Monopolies of Raw Materials
IN the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries countries within whose boundaries were produced important raw materials commonly controlled the export of such commodities with the objectives either of stimulating their fabrication at home or of exacting higher prices from foreign consumers. During the nineteenth century such export controls shrank greatly in range and importance, though they never completely disappeared.
Burgin on Hayek, Friedman, and the Great Persuasion
0:33 Intro. [Recording date: March 12, 2013.] Russ: Our topic today is your book, The Great Persuasion, which chronicles the reemergence of free market economics in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Let's start with the state of that viewpoint at the end of WWII. What was the intellectual situation for free market economics and free market economists?
Benn Steil on the Battle of Bretton Woods
0:33 Intro. [Recording date: January 30, 2015.] Russ: That book, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order, by Benn Steil. Now Bretton Woods was a legendary international conference in 1944, toward the end of WWWII with the goal of creating an international monetary system, to correct some of the perceived problems in international trade and the health of the world's economies.
Free Trade? Anything But...
Despite these hoped for gains, I am skeptical. Creating an Atlantic Partnership implies much more than lowering tariffs. That is the easy bit. And as the weighted average tariff on goods in the United States and the European Union is below 3 percent, the gains from lowering them might not be that large.
Studies in the Theory of International Trade
In this book I first endeavor to trace, in a series of studies of the contemporary source-material, the evolution of the modern “orthodox” theory of international trade, from its beginnings in the revolt against English mercantilism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the English currency and tariff controversies of the nineteenth century, to its present-day form.
Doug Irwin on US Trade Policy (BONUS) – Conversations with Tyler – Medium
Tyler thinks Douglas Irwin has just released the best history of American trade policy ever written. So for this conversation Tyler went easy on Doug, asking softball questions like: Have tariffs ever driven growth? What trade exceptions should there be for national security, or cultural reasons? In an era of low tariffs, what margins matter most for trade liberalization? Do investor arbitration panels override national sovereignty? And, what’s the connection between free trade and world peace?
The Treatment of Germany
THE governments of all the leading Powers are now faced with the problem of the postwar treatment of Germany, in all of its phases. The responsibility, moreover, is primarily a governmental one. Intelligent and comprehensive consideration of how this responsibility should be carried out requires detailed and timely factual information. This is in large part available only to governments and their personnel.
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