Tomorrow is the release date for a book I edited for the Fraser Institute; it’s titled What America’s Decline in Economic Freedom Means for Entrepreneurship and Prosperity. The five chapters, all originally written for this volume, are by (in order of appearance in the book):
1. Liya Palagashvili, “Entrepreneurship, Institutions, and Economic Prosperity”
2. Russell Sobel, “Economic Freedom and Entrepreneurship”
3. Robert Lawson, “Economic Freedom in the United States and Other Countries”
4. Roger Meiners & Andrew Morriss, “Special Interests, Competition, and the Rule of Law”
5. Clyde Wayne Crews, “One Nation, Ungovernable? Confronting the Modern Regulatory State”
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University is helping to promote the book, its scholarship, and its message. My student Liya Palagashvili (who, by the way, will launch her career this Fall as an Assistant Professor of Economics at SUNY-Purchase) has an excellent article on the volume in U.S. News & World Report. A slice:
The book also addresses the role of entrepreneurship and small businesses in job creation and promoting economic growth and prosperity. People living in the United States and much of the developed world today experience significantly higher standards of living because entrepreneurs continuously introduce and improve market products – not only items such as personal computers and cell phones, but new medicines, better clothing and other technologies that improve ordinary people’s daily lives.
New technological improvements are sparked when entrepreneurs are able to reap the benefits of their innovations, and business entry is high when start-up costs are low. Efforts to foster business activity and these entrepreneurial processes should not focus on particular businesses, corporations or people. Instead, such efforts should strive to create an environment that allows for entrepreneurial activity of all kinds to thrive.
(I don’t yet have a link to the book; but when I get one I’ll pass it along here at the Cafe.)
