Böcker utgivna av Cato Institute

Unlock the power of shareholder capitalism -- a system that transcends zero-sum games and Wall Street stereotypes. In its essence, shareholder capitalism enables mutually beneficial trade, a concept ingrained in our human history for over 300,000 years. This approach fosters specialization, fuels innovation, and propels economic growth. In this engaging new book, David McLean explains how embracing shareholder capitalism doesn't negate the significance of other institutions; rather, it allows businesses to excel in providing the goods, services, and jobs that make society better off. Shareholder capitalism isn't about disregarding stakeholders; it thrives on mutually beneficial partnerships, and managers are entrusted to maximize shareholder value, focusing on companies' long-term success, which drives overall prosperity. Profits, the ultimate measure of value, steer businesses toward creating goods and services that benefit society. While shareholder capitalism is the overarching theme in Finance 101 courses, it is increasingly criticized, especially with the popularization of concepts like ESG investing and stakeholder capitalism. McLean argues that corporate social responsibility, while well-intentioned, shouldn't replace the democratic process in policymaking, and can lead to unintended consequences. Our journey through capitalism, beginning around 1800, has brought unprecedented prosperity, and it's essential to safeguard this system for the betterment of society, with democracy and free trade as our guiding beacons.

The fourth edition of this study ranks the American states according to how their public policies affect individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.

A quick¿¿reference guide to reforms that state and federal policymakers must enact to make health care better, more affordable, more secure, and more universal.Health care in the United States is not a free market. In many ways, U.S. residents are less free to make their own health decisions than residents of other nations. Government controls a larger share of health spending in the United States than in Canada, the United Kingdom, and most other advanced nations. State and federal governments subsidize low¿¿quality medical care and penalize high¿¿quality care. They block innovations that would otherwise reduce medical prices. Congress even funds veterans benefits in a way that increases the likelihood of war.Fortunately, there are corners of the U.S. health sector where market forces have had room to breathe. In those areas, markets have made health care better, more affordable, and more secure. They have made health care more universal-both in the United States and in nations that supposedly already had universal health care. Sometimes, market forces develop such innovations despite government policies that exist explicitly to block them.Those sorts of innovations should be exploding across the United States and the world, bringing affordable health care to low¿¿income patients and driving high¿¿cost and low¿¿quality providers and insurers out of business. But they aren't.Recovery shows that making health care as universal as possible requires ending all barriers that government places in the way of better, more affordable, and more secure health care.

In this annual review from the Cato Institute, leading legal scholars analyze the 2022-2023 Supreme Court term, specifically the most important and far-reaching cases of the year, plus cases coming up. Now in its 22nd edition, the Review is the first scholarly journal to appear after the term's end and the only one grounded in the nation's first principles, liberty, and limited government.

Empowering the New American Worker identifies what Cato Institute scholars believe to be the most important market-oriented policies for today's American worker, covering a broad array of issues including education, housing, remote work, health care, child care, transportation, criminal justice, and licensing.Since at least 2016, policymakers on both the right and the left have lamented the plight of the American worker and promised to fix it. Unfortunately, the most common "pro-worker" policies today -- heavy on government intervention in labor, trade, or other markets -- suffer from critical flaws. They overlook the numerous laws and regulations that distort markets, harm American workers, and breed economic sclerosis. They ignore market¿based solutions that can boost workers' independence, mobility, wealth, resilience, and quality of life-all without the inevitable economic and political problems that come with more spending and bureaucracy. And, perhaps most importantly, they target an "American worker" that often bears little resemblance to the U.S. workforce's complex and ever¿changing reality, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.Recent trends in manufacturing, remote work, independent work, globalization, and other areas argue for new policies for a New American Worker. Instead of promoting a certain kind of job, promising cradle-to-grave protection from disruption, or presuming that the employment and lifestyle trends of today will last beyond tomorrow, policymakers should seek to maximize Americans' autonomy, mobility, and living standards.Each chapter of Empowering the New American Worker identifies the problems facing American workers and suggests pro-market ways for federal, state, and local officials to better address these challenges. These policies will give individuals the freedom and resources they need to be the American worker they want to be -- not the one many policymakers think they should be -- and to be happier and more prosperous in the process.

Most American adults easily recognize the following description of the 2008 financial crisis. Unregulated Wall Street firms (so-called shadow banks) made too many risky bets with derivatives, causing the housing bubble to burst. The contagious run through the financial system was only arrested by bailouts from the federal government and major regulatory changes. But what if the record demonstrates that the core of this story is misleading and the resulting regulations are misguided? Now, almost 15 years later, the Biden administration is using this same story to promote more regulations for money market mutual funds (a key part of the supposedly dangerous shadow banking system) and even to justify allowing only federally insured banks to issue stablecoins (a type of cryptocurrency that didn't exist in 2008). But most of the post-2008 regulatory efforts were concentrated in the traditional banking sector-not the shadow banking sector-which warrants skepticism toward the conventional story of the 2008 crisis and any new regulations based on that story.This new book from explores the main problems with the conventional story about the 2008 crisis and explains why it does not justify expanding bank-like regulations throughout financial markets to mitigate systemic risks.

Centers of Progress: Forty Cities that Changed the World takes readers on a journey through history's greatest urban centers.

An insider's account of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption of our mortgage, housing, and financial markets.

Populism and the Future of the Fed features highly readable essays that provide a broad perspective on core issues-including the populist challenge to Fed independence, fiscal dominance and the return of inflation, the limits of Fed power versus the expansion of its dual mandate, and the strange world of helicopter money and fiscal QE.

This short but accessible book provides an argument that the Lockean revolution in Christianity¿which reconciled faith with freedom¿is both desperately necessary and also promisingly possible in Islam.

Economics in One Virus provides an introduction to timeless economic insights using the case study of COVID-19.

What do we mean by liberalism or liberal history? It seems that every scholar in the social sciences would like to define liberalism in their own way. Certainly there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on this matter. But defining any "-ism" requires circumscribing a set of beliefs or drawing lines in such a way as to connect ideas that we believe form a coherent tradition.Liberal history is primarily concerned with ideas and with the reasons why individuals acted as they did in the past. Liberal historians prefer to study themes of power and liberty, particularly as they relate to the rise and fall of political systems that protect liberties and individual rights. As the selections in this reader show, the liberal approach to the past is generally skeptical of laws of history and suggestions of historical determinism.

Most political debate is superficial. Just turn on cable news. Philosophy is for people who want to understand the deep questions. The goal of political philosophy is to determine the standards by which we judge different institutions good or bad, just or unjust. Some people might think they don't have much need of political philosophy: "e;Who cares about wishy-washy obtuse notions of justice? I'm a pragmatist. I just want to know what works."e; But this isn't a way of avoiding political philosophy; it's a way of being dogmatic about it. Before we can just do "e;what works,"e; we have to know what counts as working. This book serves as an introduction to some of the major theories of justice, to the arguments philosophers have made for and against these theories, and, ultimately, to how to be more thoughtful and rigorous in your own thinking.

Liberal democracies such as the United States face an acute dilemma in the conduct of foreign relations. Many states around the world are repressive or corrupt to varying degrees. Unfortunately, American national interests require cooperation with such regimes from time to time. To defeat Nazi Germany during World War II, the United States even allied with the Soviet Union, despite the barbarity of Josef Stalin's regime.But such partnerships have the inherent danger of compromising, or even making a mockery of, America's values of democratic governance, civil liberties, and free markets. Close working relationships with autocratic regimes, therefore, should not be undertaken lightly. U.S. officials have had a less than stellar record of grappling with that ethical dilemma. Especially during the Cold War, policymakers were casual about sacrificing important values for less-than-compelling strategic rationales. Since the 9-11 attacks, similar ethical compromises have taken place, although policymakers now seem more selective than their Cold War-era counterparts.In Perilous Partners, authors Ted Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent provide a strategy for resolving the ethical dilemmas between interests and values faced by Washington. They propose maintaining an "e;arm's length relationship"e; with authoritarian regimes, emphasizing that the United States must not operate internationally in ways that routinely pollute American values. The degree of appropriate cooperation with an authoritarian regime should vary depending on the severity of the security threat the United States faces in each situation, how valuable a given ally is in meeting that threat, how odious is the ally's domestic conduct, and whether there are reasonable alternatives for achieving U.S. strategic objectives. It is a strategy based on ethical pragmatism, which is the best way to reconcile America's strategic interests and its fundamental values.

As the United States adjusts to a changing global balance of power, nuclear deterrence is poised to return to a level of importance in U.S. national security not seen since the end of the Cold War. However, U.S. nuclear strategy will have to contend with emerging issues like arms control in a multipolar world, the evolution of strategic technology, and the new contours of great power competition.America’s Nuclear Crossroads: A Forward-Looking Anthology is a useful reference tool for policymakers and laypeople alike as they navigate an increasingly complex nuclear security environment. The debates and policy decisions that play out over the next few years will likely affect America’s nuclear deterrence and arms control strategies for decades to come. This anthology offers a wide view of the most pressing challenges the United States is facing at this crossroads. While it cannot resolve every emerging problem, we hope America’s Nuclear Crossroads sparks a broader dialogue and offers some initial recommendations for solving said challenges.

Presidential impeachments are rare in American constitutional history: in the 230 years since ratification, only three presidents have faced serious attempts to remove them from office. Indispensable Remedy is a comprehensive primer on the purpose, history, and scope of the Constitution's impeachment provisions-and a corrective to myths that have grown up around the remedy. First among the myths is the notion that impeachment is reserved solely for criminal abuses of office."Perversely, as the power of the office has grown," writes author Gene Healy, "that misconception has ensured that the federal official with the greatest capacity to do harm now enjoys stronger job protection than virtually any other American." But the remedy James Madison described as "indispensable. . .for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate" isn't limited to violations of the law or abuses of official power. The power to impeach, writes Healy, "should never be involved lightly, but neither should Americans fear to wield it, should it become necessary."

In October 2008, as the U.S. economy plunged, the Federal Reserve began paying interest on banks' reserve balances. The resulting switch to a "floor system" of monetary control, in which changes in the interest rate on reserves, rather than reserve creation or destruction, became the Fed's chief tool for influencing economic activity, was to have far-reaching consequences-almost all of them regrettable.Besides intensifying the downturn by causing banks to hoard reserves, the floor system all but destroyed the market for unsecured interbank loans that had been banks' ordinary "first resort" source of last-minute liquidity. By depriving the Fed's asset purchases of the ability to stimulate investment and spending, it also compelled the Fed to compensate by purchasing assets on an unprecedented scale. All of this resulted in a substantial increase in the Fed's role in allocating scarce credit. Finally, by severing the ordinary connection between the stance of monetary policy and the extent of the Fed's asset holdings, the floor system risks turning the Fed's balance sheet into a fiscal-policy playground.Floored! offers a matchless account of our post-crisis monetary system's history and shortcomings.

Throughout his life, Walt Whitman was dazzled by the 19th century's seemingly endless cascade of political, economic, technological, and social revolutions. He spent his career in search of the Great American Artist who could capture the incredible nature of the country and the age. In Democratic Vistas, Whitman offered his own vision of the world's evolving liberal Manifest Destiny, complete with castles in the air, exploration of the stars, and the conquest of death. Whitman believed there were no discernable limits to human achievement, if only we would leave each other in peace.

John Ponet (ca. 1514-1556) was the Anglican Bishop of Winchester at a raucous and revolutionary time in English history. King Henry VIII had recently inaugurated the English Reformation and established the Anglican Church, staffed in part at least with emerging radicals like Ponet. When the Catholic Queen Mary I determined to roll back Protestantism, Ponet and hundreds of others fled to Europe. During his exile, Ponet wrote a Short Treatise on Political Power (1556), which argued that the people can and should punish-perhaps even execute-wicked monarchs. Ponet's tract anticipated great liberal thinkers for centuries to come. By 1776, the Short Treatise rested (well-worn) on many Patriots' bookshelves.