It may sound odd, but only free and open markets, not government regulation, can quickly and effectively clean up the mess that markets sometimes make.

A year ago in December, more than 40,000 other home-based day care providers statewide were suddenly informed they were members of Child Care Providers Together Michigan—a union created in 2006 by the United Auto Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union had won a certification election conducted by mail under the auspices of the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. In that... More

If there's a Ground Zero for America's foreclosure mess outside of much of California and metro Las Vegas, it's probably Cleveland, the Northeast Ohio city known in most of the rest of the state as the Mistake on the Lake.The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Mark Gillespie got out from behind his desk, committed some good old-fashioned journalism, and found that city government itself contributed mightily and extraordinarily negligently... More

French public intellectuals have a reputation—well-deserved—for being socialists, Marxists, or Trotskyists. Some French thinkers, however, have carried forward another intellectual tradition, that of classical liberalism—pro-democracy and pro-market—and running from the work of Alexis de Tocqueville to Albert Camus to the philosopher and journalist Jean-François Revel, who died at 82 in... More

Economic change is fomenting intellectual change. When the economy was about stuff, economics resembled physics. When it’s about ideas, economics comes to resemble psychology.

The California Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the State faces a $21 billion shortfall in the current as well as the next fiscal year. That’s a problem, a really big problem. My young son would say it was a ginormous problem. In fact, it may be an insurmountable problem.

The demand for up-to-date economic indicators has led researchers to use Google to improve the predictive power of their models. Here is evidence from the US and Italy that using search trends on Google significantly increases the accuracy of forecasting unemployment.

With little prospect of an agreement at the talks this week bringing immediate and binding emissions limits on the developing world, pressures are mounting in Europe and the United States to impose restrictions, called border adjustments, on imports from low-cost producers like China and India that are resisting cutting greenhouse gases.

Whole Foods co-founder and chief executive officer John Mackey discusses health care reform and more in this interview.

People's increasing willingness to abandon their own piece of America illustrates a paradoxical change wrought by the housing bust: Even as it tarnishes the near-sacred image of home ownership, it might be clearing the way for an economic recovery.

A radical plan to regulate the Internet may totally upend the free market in today's massive information economy.

Some analysts have argued that a new government jobs program would be more effective at putting people back to work than a second stimulus. A large share of the current $799 billion stimulus package has gone to state governments, with the aim of preventing more layoffs among public-sector workers and in public education. Should saving these government and education jobs be a priority? Is there a way to establish a public program... More

For regulators to succeed, they need enough information to restrain excessive risk-taking and that requires a system where financial firms reveal each other’s risks.

Housing markets in the United States and Canada are similar in many respects, but each has fared quite differently since the onset of the financial crisis. A comparison of the two markets suggests that relaxed lending standards likely played a critical role in the U.S. housing bust.

Global investors are in a giant huff over Dubai’s decision to allow its flagship private company Dubai World to seek a six-month standstill (implying at least partial default) on payments on some $26 billion in debt. What exactly did investors expect when they purchased bonds in companies with names like “Limitless World,” one of Dubai World’s bankrupt real-estate subsidiaries? Talk about a bubble... More

This week, Ford announced that India would be a global manufacturing hub for its new small car, the Figo. This underlies the remarkable progress India has made exporting cars, overtaking China.

At the Heavenly Models home for deceased economists, an award is being presented to the resident whose work best explains financial crises, global warming, and other pressing issues of today. The favored candidates include John Maynard Keynes, the patron saint of stimulus programs; Hyman Minsky, an American disciple of Mr. Keynes who warned about the dangers of financial deregulation; and... More