I’m delighted to announce that THE WAR ON PRICES: How Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy is now available for **pre-order** ahead of its publication on 14th May 2024.
The book is a multi-author volume, which looks at the many myths and misconceptions that surround the inflation we’ve just experienced, the age-old allure of government price controls, and the morality of allowing freely set market prices and wages.
GMU professor Tyler Cowen, he of Marginal Revolution fame, says:
The United States and indeed most of the world is coming off a major bout of inflation. Fallacies have been multiplying in the media and from commentators. Ryan Bourne has edited a new volume—The War on Prices—that sets the record straight. Here is your go-to book on rising prices, price controls, and other government policies toward prices.
There are chapters from some excellent economists, including Stan Veuger, Bryan Cutsinger, Jeffrey Miron, Deirdre McCloskey, Brian Albrecht, Pierre Lemieux, David Beckworth, Jeffrey Clemens, Joseph Sabia, Peter Jaworski, Alex Edmans and Len Shackleton, Liya Palagashvili and a host of my Cato colleagues.
The quality of the economics in the book has been recognized by people from across the political spectrum. Jason Furman, the chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, writes:
It is not just actual prices that have risen unusually rapidly in recent years—muddled thinking about prices has grown exponentially. I do not agree with the conclusion of every chapter of this volume, but I agree with most of them. And all of them are grounded in the type of rigorous economics and empirics that are sadly missing in too much of the popular debate.
Due to be published on 14th May 2024, the book goes from exploring whether “greedflation” exacerbated our recent inflation, right through to assessing whether discrimination in the workplace is the cause of the gender pay gap.
Across three sections - inflation, prices and price controls, and value - you’ll read about everything from price controls in Ancient Egypt to modern caps on rents, America’s experience with World War II and oil and gas price controls, plus new perspectives on the minimum wage, CEO pay, price controls in healthcare, dynamic pricing, and the underlying economics of Joe Biden’s war on supposed “junk fees.”
The Hoover Institution’s David Henderson concludes:
The War on Prices is a fantastic book. It comprehensively makes the case that price controls do great harm, often to the people they are supposed to help. Particularly good are the chapters on rent controls, price controls on oil and natural gas, and so-called “junk fees,” which are really fees to solve problems that would exist without them. If the chapter on why we should have a free market in water were taken to heart, my fellow Californians and I would be much better off. Read this book and learn.
You can pre-order your copy from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple and Bookshop today.
**If you are a journalist, commentator, or economist and intend to review the book for a publication, please feel free to email me to discuss receiving a review copy.**