Fractional Reserve Banking vs. 100% Reserve Banking
What is the difference between fractional reserve banking and full reserve banking? How do they work? Do they have advantages and disadvantages? Is one better than the other? We hired a detective to check [...]
Money Creation
Money creation: described by many as the biggest scam in the history of mankind; for others it’s a blessing and a driving force of the economy. For John Maynard Keynes it was a process [...]
Opportunity Cost | The Road Not Taken
Imagine the following situations: 1) A young man enrolls in a tuition-free public university. From his point of view he gets the education for free. He will study in a field of [...]
The Methodology of the Austrian School
When we refer to the Austrian School of Economics, we do not mean an institution located in a building in Vienna, nor we mean the Austrian economy. Instead, we mean a group of persons [...]
A Petition – Frédéric Bastiat | Candlestick makers’ Petition
A Petition - Frédéric Bastiat. Animation of famous candlestick makers' petition by Frédéric Bastiat. It's a great lesson about free trade, and a big blow to the protectionist arguments. Learn Austrian Economics in [...]
Price Discovery | How prices are determined?
In our previous videos entitled "The Value of Things" and "Scarce Resources" we have discussed how value is a subjective phenomenon. Two diverse people can estimate value of the same thing very differently. Every [...]
Why Can’t We Have Everything We Want? | Scarcity & Choice
We live in a world of scarcity. This fact is beyond question. Our time, land, and work are scarce. Producer and consumer goods are scarce as well. Human needs, however, are limitless. Economics studies [...]
Housing bubble and the great recession
Without a question we can all remember the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Perhaps you learned of its effects the hard way. The media told us that greed and excessive risk were responsible. Some economists, [...]
The Great Depression | What Caused It?
The Great Depression of the 1930s is still considered by many to be a failure of the free market and of the laissez-faire capitalism. At a first glance, it may very well seem so. [...]
Is legal the same as moral?
Freedom of the market doesn’t imply the absence of law. To the contrary: free market is impossible without good law. Then what function should the law fulfill? If something is legal, then is it [...]