"A fascinating look at the evolution of behavioral science, the revolutionary way it's changing the way we live, and how nurturing environments can increase people's well-being in virtually every aspect of our society, from early childhood education to corporate practices. If you want to know how you can help create a better world, read this book. What if there were a way to prevent criminal behavior, mental illness, drug abuse, poverty, and violence?...

"In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the 20 dollars a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of...

S. David Young argues that occupational licensing results in the misallocation of labor and harms consumers.

With the appointment of William H. Rehnquist as Chief Justice of the United States and Antonin Scalia as associate justice, there is renewed interest in questions of judicial activism and the role of the courts in protecting personal and economic liberties. To further public discussion of these fundamental questions, the Cato Institute is pleased to present this debate between Judge Scalia and Richard A.Epstein, James Parker Hall Professor of Law...

In this monograph, Professors Wagner and Tollison examine the important question of whether the United States should adopt a constitutional amendment requiring the government to balance its budget. Arguing that the government should be explicit and responsible about how much it spends and how it spends it, they determine that the balanced budget idea is fiscally sound and democratically necessary.

America's health care system is at a crossroads, faced with rising costs, quality concerns, and a lack of patient control. Some blame market forces. Yet many troubles can be traced directly to pervasive government influence: entitlements, tax laws, and costly regulations. Consumer choice and competition deliver higher quality and lower prices in other areas of the economy. The authors conclude that removing restrictions can do the same for health...

Kori Schake shows how the deficiencies in focus, education, and programmatic proficiency impede the work of the State Department and suggests how investing in those areas could make the agency significantly more successful at building stable and prosperous democratic governments around the world. She explains why, instead of burdening the US military with yet another inherently civilian function, work should focus on bringing those agencies of the...

In this study, Dr. Charles Baird addresses the rent control boom currently underway in the United States. Beginning with the fundamentals of supply and demand for housing, Baird expands his analysis to include questions of equity, housing availability, and special interest manipulation of regulatory statutes. He shows that high housing costs do not occur in a vacuum but are related to many other governmental policies including zoning, housing codes,...

A policy of global intervention, whereby we adopt every country's threats as our own, is the strategic premise of the Bush administration's post-Persian Gulf defense program, argues former Pentagon official Earl C. Ravenal. Ravenal's alternative defense budget, based on a strategy of noninterventionism, would save American taxpayers more than $300 billion over the next five years. It would also phase out such increasingly irrelevant cold-war-era commitments...

The inspiring story of how Václav Klaus brought the Czech Republic out of communism. Václav Klaus was appointed finance minister of the Czech Republic in 1990, shortly after the demise of that country's communist government. Two years later he was named prime minister, and in that capacity he has been one of the most effective spokesmen for classical liberal ideas in the world. With the publication of Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty in the Heart...