Many countries have social security systems that are currently financially unsustainable. Economists and policy makers have long studied this problem and identified two key causes. First, as declining birth rates raise the share of older persons in t...

Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostere...

The U. S. government is the world's largest financial institution, providing credit and assuming risk through diverse activities. But the potential cost and risk of these actions and obligations remain poorly understood and only partially measured. G...

Since the earliest days of philosophy, thinkers have debated the meaning of the term happiness and the nature of the good life. But it is only in recent years that the study of happiness – or "hedonics" – has developed into a formal field of inquiry,...

When firms and people are located near each other in cities and in industrial clusters, they benefit in various ways, including by reducing the costs of exchanging goods and ideas. One might assume that these benefits would become less important as t...

Many of us suspect that Social Security faces eventual bankruptcy. But the government projects its future finances using long outdated methods. Employing a more up-to-date approach, Jagadeesh Gokhale here argues that the program faces insolvency far...

It is rare for countries to give up their currencies and thus their ability to influence such critical aspects of their economies as interest and exchange rates. Yet ten years ago a number of European countries did exactly that when they adopted the...

The baby boom generation's entry into old age has led to an unprecedented increase in the elderly population. The social and economic effects of this shift are significant, and in "Research Findings in the Economics of Aging", a group of leading rese...

Recent high-profile corporate scandals – such as those involving Enron in the United States, Yukos in Russia, and Livedoor in Japan – demonstrate challenges to legal regulation of business practices in capitalist economies. Setting forth a new analyt...

"Studies on the Abuse and Decline of Reason" is a series of fascinating essays on the study of social phenomena. How to best and most accurately study social interactions has long been debated intensely, and there are two main approaches: the positiv...