The Mercatus Center is a university-based research center that focuses on how markets solve problems & improve our lives.
David Schmidtz argues that rational self-governance—whether individual, corporate, or academic—requires artificially imposed constraints and mission-driven frameworks to make decision-making manageable, while criticizing universities for prioritizing student comfort over intellectual growth and risk-taking.
Shani and De argue that India's Constitution was not an elite gift or pedagogical project imposed from above, but actively assembled through mass public participation across the subcontinent, with ordinary citizens claiming constitutional agency long before the text was finalized.
On the 250th anniversary of *The Wealth of Nations*, economist Maria Pia Paganelli reframes Adam Smith not as a simplistic apostle of self-interest, but as a sophisticated critic of institutional power who exposed how special interests capture the state to benefit at society's expense, while emphasizing that understanding wealth creation is literally a matter of life and death for the most vulnerable.
Historian David Beito challenges FDR's ranking as one of America's greatest presidents, arguing that prolonged economic depression, anti-Semitic refugee policies, and pioneering mass surveillance programs reveal a record of civil liberties abuses that wartime leadership has obscured.
Pranay Kotasthane explains that while rare earth elements are geologically abundant, China's dominance in the environmentally damaging refining process creates acute supply vulnerabilities. This concentration risk has led to geopolitical weaponization through export controls, which paradoxically accelerates global efforts to develop substitutes and alternative supply chains.
Economist Kenneth Boulding's 1978 book "Stable Peace" offers a dynamic framework for understanding peace not as a static condition but as a resilient system balancing "strain" (destabilizing pressures) against "strength" (institutional resilience), defining peace negatively as the absence of war rather than the presence of abstract goods like justice.
Former Treasury economist Andrew Martinez discusses the evolution of macroeconomic forecasting from structural models to machine learning, emphasizing the critical tension between predictive accuracy and the need for interpretable causal narratives in policy settings.
Nachiket Mor argues that India's healthcare crisis stems not from funding shortages—India already spends enough to achieve universal coverage—but from fundamental design failures that combine archaic public sector models with outdated private insurance concepts, creating fragmented, passive care that rewards hospitalization over health.
Dan Awrey argues that centuries of path dependency have bundled banking, money, and payments into a fragile system where technological innovation now outpaces legal frameworks, creating a 'shadow monetary system' of stablecoins and digital wallets that offer superior payment technology but lack the bankruptcy protections and central bank access needed for stable nominal value.
Economist Chris Coyne contrasts state-imposed 'Pax Imperii' with emergent 'Pax Hominum,' arguing that top-down peacemaking relies on four flawed assumptions about elite capabilities while generating illiberal violence abroad and eroding domestic liberty through expanded state power.
Scott Sumner argues that monetary policy should be simplified by focusing on nominal GDP as the key indicator, returning to pre-2008 Fed operations, and recognizing that most business cycles stem from central bank mistakes rather than external shocks.
Akshay Jaitly explains how Trilegal was founded in 2000 to capitalize on India's post-1991 liberalization, distinguishing itself through operational professionalism rather than legal experience while navigating three distinct phases of deal evolution from inbound foreign investment to outbound Indian expansion.