A popularization of economic ideas which Newcomb wrote for Harpers Magazine. Another copy of this book can be found in HTML format at our sister website Econlib.

Arguably no political principle has been more central than the separation of powers to the evolution of constitutional governance in Western democracies. In the definitive work on the subject, M. J. C. Vile traces the history of the doctrine from its rise during the English Civil War, through its development in the eighteenth century - when it was indispensable to the founders of the American republic - through subsequent political thought and constitution-making in Britain, France, and the United States. The author concludes with an examination of criticisms of the doctrine by both behavioralists and centralizers - and with “A Model of a Theory of Constitutionalism.” The new Liberty Fund second edition includes the entirety of the original 1967 text published by Oxford, a major epilogue entitled “The Separation of Powers and the Administrative State,” and a bibliography.

This careful work investigating the nature of profits also includes material on the institutional structure of firms and the distribution of residuals, particularly in Part III, Chapter IX-X. It contains an interesting discussion of the difference between risk and uncertainty.

Based on a play by Friedrich Schiller. Don Carlos, the Crown Prince of Spain, is in conflict with his father, Philip II and King of Spain over his love for Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry II, King of France. Don Carlos is arrested by his father for expressing sympathy for the oppressed people of Flanders who are under Spanish rule. A popular uprising forces Philip to release his son from prison but the opera ends with Don Carlos being handed over to the Inquisition.

A pioneering artcile on the cost of production which was pubished in one of the leading professional economics journals in the early 20th century.

The Carpentier Lectures delivered at Columbia University in 1911. They are an introduction to the history and ideas behind the English Common Law.

Thinking like an economist has been a point of pride since Adam Smith. What often seems to be an endless muddle of political and social perspectives, pseudo-scientific analysis, journalistic advocacies, and financial matters from daily household concerns to the stock market, is suddenly illuminated once one discovers the economic point of view. Kirzner’s The Economic Point of View is a thoughtful study of how and why economists are successful at sorting out certain issues but less successful at others, issues from welfare to wealth to human actions. Ludwig von Mises, for whom Kirzner once worked as a graduate assistant, wrote the Foreword to the first edition.

A collection of essays some of which were previously published in the Encyclopedia Britannica. They cover money, exchange, rent, the history of commerce, maritime law, and biographical essays on Quesnay, Smith, and Ricardo.

Roscoe Pound, former dean of Harvard Law School, delivered a series of lectures at the University of Calcutta in 1948. In these lectures, he criticized virtually every modern mode of interpreting the law because he believed the administration of justice had lost its grounding and recourse to enduring ideals. Now published in the U.S. for the first time, Pound’s lectures are collected in Liberty Fund’s The Ideal Element in Law, Pound’s most important contribution to the relationship between law and liberty. The Ideal Element in Law was a radical book for its time and is just as meaningful today as when Pound’s lectures were first delivered. Pound’s view of the welfare state as a means of expanding government power over the individual speaks to the front-page issues of the new millennium as clearly as it did to America in the mid-twentieth century. Pound argues that the theme of justice grounded in enduring ideals is critical for America. He views American courts as relying on sociological theories, political ends, or other objectives, and in so doing, divorcing the practice of law from the rule of law and the rule of law from the enduring ideal of law itself.

The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was the last edition which appeared before the First World War destroyed the old liberal order in Europe. The next edition, the 12th, reproduced the 11th edition with the addition of 4 supplementary volumes which covered the war and its immediate aftermath. This article is part of the supplementary volumes.