American Institute for Economic Research

IIn this episode of The Economist Next Door, host Paul Mueller speaks with Jeff Degner and Aidan Grogan about the global fertility crisis and the sharp decline in family formation across advanced economies. Are falling birth rates primarily an affordability problem—or the result of deeper cultural changes?

In this episode of The Economist Next Door, host Paul Mueller sits down with Nobel Prize–winning economist Vernon Smith to explore how markets actually work—and how people really behave within them.

2026 marks the 250th anniversary of two momentous historical events: the publication of Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, on March 9, 1776, and, four months later, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Our world continues to be shaped by the ideas expressed in both texts.

Where occupational licensing exceeds genuine public safety needs, it substitutes centralized judgment and political privilege for the preferences of consumers and workers. The tension between individual rights and the common good is as old as political theory itself. One area in which this question arises is that of occupational licensing. To what extent can (or should) the government require a license to engage in commercial activity?

The United States has exceptionally abundant energy resources and a rich portfolio of energy-producing technologies. Nevertheless, its power sector un-derdelivers due to institutionally distorted policy design rather than technical constraints. Federal and state rules increasingly pick favored technologies instead of setting clear goals for emissions, reliability, and cost, and then allowing markets to discover the least-cost mix of energy production.

Past, Present, and a Conservative Liberal Future? A reinvigorated conservative liberal Fusionism — emphasizing limited government, free enterprise, and a transcendent moral order — may offer the best hope at reconciling a broad array of communities and values to live peacefully together, serve as a bulwark against authoritarian tendencies, and form a powerful coalition to…

As Social Security approaches its 90th anniversary, the program faces a looming identity crisis and a massive fiscal deadline. In this episode, host Veronique De Rugy sits down with Romina Boccia, Director of Budget and Entitlement Policy at the Cato Institute and co-author of Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes.

How did a once-small federal government come to control a third of state budgets and shape everyday life across the country? Host Paul Mueller talks with AIER scholars Tom Savidge and Dave Hebert about the history of federal funding to states—from the Founding through the Great Society—and how Washington gradually became the dominant force in American governance. As the saying goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

On the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations, host Paul Mueller sits down with economists Dan Klein, professor at George Mason University and chief editor of Econ Journal Watch, and Eric Matson, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and lecturer at Catholic University, to explore Adam Smith’s enduring impact.

In this episode, Veronique de Rugy and Luke Foster peel back the layers of the “French political soul,” and explore the intellectual roots of the Franco-American relationship. Foster, a professor and co-founder of Academia Tocqueville, argues that Tocqueville’s emphasis on civil society as a check on central power remains the ultimate diagnostic tool for modern governance.