Book Reviews

Book Review: Power and Prosperity

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2000

Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships by Mancur Olson (New York: Basic Books, 2000); 233 pages; $28. MANCUR OLSON, who died in 1998 at the age of 62, was one of the most insightful economic analysts of the political process. His most original and important work was The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of ...

Book Review: From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 2000

From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays by Peter Bauer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); 153 pages; $24.95. FREE-MARKET ECONOMIST Peter T. Bauer is 85 years old this year. During the 55 years since the end of the Second World War, Bauer has been one of the most articulate and insightful critics of economic planning and government intervention in the ...

Book Review: Trust on Trial

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2000

Trust on Trial: How the Microsoft Case Is Reframing the Rules of Competition by Richard B. McKenzie (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2000); 281 pages; $26. IN HIS 1942 BOOK, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter argued, “The fundamental impulse that set and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or ...

Book Review: 15 Great Austrian Economists

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2000

15 Great Austrian Economists edited by Randall G. Holcombe (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999); 258 pages; $15.95. TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO, in June 1974, I was fortunate enough to be invited by the Institute for Humane Studies to be one of 40 people who attended a week-long conference on Austrian economics in South Royalton, Vermont. After a decades long hiatus, ...

Book Review: The Invention of the Passport

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2000

The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State by John Torpey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); 210 pages; $19.95. One of the most stupendous achievements of 19th-century classical liberalism was the right of freedom of movement. As one indication, between 1840 and the early decades of the 20th century almost 60 million people emigrated from Europe to other ...

Book Review: Reflections on a Ravaged Century

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2000

Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000); 317 pages; $26.95. When the 19th century was ending, there was a great sense of optimism and confidence. The December 31, 1899, issue of the New York Times had devoted practically its entire editorial page to a summary of the magnificent achievements of the 19th century: the steam ...

Book Review: Business Ethics

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2000

Business Ethics by Norman Barry (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2000); 191 pages; $14.95. It is rarely appreciated how much the market economy has contributed to the growth of civilization and rules of good behavior among the members of society. For example, Adam Smith pointed out more than 200 hundred years ago: "When commerce is introduced into any country, probity and ...

Book Review: The End of Privacy

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2000

The End of Privacy: Personal Rights in the Surveillance Society by Charles J. Sykes (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); 282 pages; $24.95. At Menwith Hill in the North York moors of Great Britain, there is a spy center employing 1,400 U.S. National Security Agency personnel ...

Book Review: The Black Book of Communism

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2000

The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); 856 pages; $37.50. In 1875, Karl Marx wrote an article entitled, "Critique of the Gotha Programme." At one point in the text there appear the following sentences: "Between capitalist and communist society lies the period ...

Book Review: The Quest for Cosmic Justice

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1999

The Quest for Cosmic Justice by Thomas Sowell (New York: The Free Press, 1999); 214 pages; $25. On August 18, 1919, during the Russian Civil War that resulted in the triumph of communism and the creation of the Soviet Union, there appeared the following passage in the first issue of The Red Sword, a newspaper published in Kiev by the Bolshevik ...

Book Review: Patterns in the Dark

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1999

Patterns in the Dark: Understanding Risk and Financial Crisis with Complexity Theory by Edgar E. Peters (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999); 222 pages; $39.95. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the Austrian school of economics was considered one of the leading contributors to both economic theory and economic policy. The Austrian economists challenged the premises and arguments of the ...

Book Review: What do Economists Contribute?

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1999

What Do Economists Contribute? edited by Daniel B. Klein (New York: New York University Press, 1999); 156 pages; $14.95. The following is the abstract of an economics article that appeared in the November 1998 issue of the International Economics Review: "The authors investigate confidence intervals and inference for the instrumental variables model with weak instruments. Confidence intervals based ...