Tyler Cowen

Last month my home state of Virginia lifted its mask mandate, at least for fully vaccinated people and subject to some modest qualifications. My employer, a public university, followed suit. At the same time, the stores and restaurants I frequent have continued their mandates without…

Human behavior during Covid has upended one of the most fundamental assumptions of economics, even if economists haven’t yet come around to admitting it. In sum: People are worse at big, important decisions than previously thought, and better at small, trivial ones. Standard economics theory…

A digital currency issued by the Federal Reserve would revolutionize the US financial industry. Yet while economic and financial digitization is crucial, as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell says, it cannot also be universal. The result is that major economies are going to end up with at least two…

Economics is one of the better-funded and more scientific social sciences, but in some critical ways it is failing us. The main problem, as I see it, is standards: They are either too high or too low. In both cases, the result is less daring and creativity. Consider academic research. In the…

President Joe Biden’s proposal to nearly double the tax rate on capital gains has led to a reexamination of a long-running economic debate. This discussion can get bogged down in technicalities and miss the main point: First and foremost, any system of taxation is about values. And a much higher…

Now that the Pentagon takes UFOs seriously, it’s perhaps appropriate to consider some more mundane aspects of the phenomenon — namely, what it means for markets. UFO data will probably remain murky and unresolved, but if UFOs of alien origin become somewhat more likely (starting, to be clear, from…

In one of the greatest marketing coups in the US government history, the CIA has succeeded at one of the most difficult tasks facing any organization, public or private: It has produced a viral video. Some wags on Twitter are referring to the video as “Woke James Bond.” The narrative presents a…

One of the most disturbing trends in recent economic thought is the view that green energy should be viewed as a source of good jobs. Such attitudes are bad for our polity and for our economy. To be clear, the need for greener energy policies is imperative. Honest observers may disagree about…

In matters of human affairs, there is little stranger than our tendency to draw fine distinctions of style and status where none are needed. We do it with hats, with indie rock groups, with preschool programs and, now, with vaccines. I have observed a growing divergence of perceptions for what…

A little more than a year ago, a lifelong “libertarian” (quotes very much necessary) took stock of the movement and declared it “pretty much hollowed out.” For one thing, he wrote, it cannot “solve or even very well address a number of major problems, most significantly climate change.” For another…