Benjamin Graham developed "value investing", a style adopted by Warren Buffett, one of history's most successful investors. It is based on "fundamental analysis", which quantitatively compares a company's stock price to various measures of financial ...

Fundamental Analysis, Value Investing, and Growth Investing

In his monumental work, Das Kapital, Karl Marx (1818-1883) tried to show that capitalism was both inefficient and immoral. His key to explaining capitalism is his labor theory of value, which he developed from ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo.  ...

Karl Marx

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) were perhaps the foremost defenders of the free market and limited government during the mid-twentieth century ascendancy of Keynesian economics. Mises highlighted the problem of economic c...

The Austrian Case for the Free Market Process

The classical economists pioneered a new way of thinking about the uniquely human tendency to produce, trade, consume, and accumulate.  Adam Smith (1723-1790) explained how the division of labor expands productive power and argued for freedom in econ...

The Classical Economists

Any good financial plan must address how to preserve what you earn. Though tax law and inheritance laws constantly change, this presentation will give you a clear "big picture" on the basic pitfalls and opportunities in this potentially complicated (...

Taxes, Estate Planning, and Asset Protection

Jean Paul Getty and John Templeton are great examples of "bargain hunters" or "contrarians" who seek to find promising stocks that are out of favor or fashion: and therefore undervalued. Slightly different are those who study cycles and waves to dete...

Bargain Hunters, Contrarians, Cycles, and Waves

Most investors do not get involved in speculation or commodities, but speculators play a vital function in financial markets by absorbing and managing risk. Technical traders practically ignore business results within specific companies, instead focu...

Technical Traders and Commodity Speculators

Financial markets have an impressive history of gains and progress for prudent and judicious investors. But these advances are often interrupted by powerful and sudden setbacks or forward lurches.  What is it about investment psychology, and the stru...

Crashes, Booms, Panics, and Government Regulations

Carl Menger (1840-1921) and Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (1851-1914), working in Vienna in the late nineteenth century, rejected the classical and Marxian ideas that value can be measured objectively. They insisted that the subjective preferences of consume...

Early Austrian Economics

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was without question the most influential economist of the twentieth century. His most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, was published in 1936, and it was widely perceived as offeri...

The Keynesian Revolution

Public confidence in financial markets depends on the perception that they are fair and just, not distorted or manipulated to the advantage of particular traders. This is the story of those who have sought illicit advantages, and how markets and inve...

Stock Frauds, Manipulations, and Insider Trading

Dr. Arjo Klamer: Monetarism emerged in the 1960's under the leadership of Milton Friedman, who received the Nobel Prize in 1976. Friedman taught at the University of Chicago during this period, developing monetarism as a branch of Frank Knight's famo...

Monetarism and Supply Side Economics

Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) viewed capitalism as a dynamic engine of progress. In his view, mature economic systems find a regular and stable routine of supply, demand, and exchange; Schumpeter called this the "circular flow". Entrepreneurs interru...

Joseph Schumpeter and Dynamic Economical Change

For centuries, gold has been considered a safe haven; it is tangible, unlike an account balance, and its value is relatively stable, especially as a hedge against inflation. To what degree should investors seek security in gold, or in other kinds of ...

Gold, Hard Money, and Financial Gurus

In America's financial nerve center, fortunes are made, and sometimes lost. J.P. Morgan, Jay Gould, Hetty Green, Jim Brady, Jesse Livermore, Bernard Baruch, Joseph Kennedy, and many others have made "the street" what it is today. Learn about the tech...

Wall Street and Its Mystery Men

Since World War II, economists have struggled to understand the Keynesian Revolution and to apply its lessons to the modern economy. The heart of the debate over Keynes' radical ideas has been whether they could or should be reconciled with the older...

Struggle Over the Keynesian Heritage

Frank Knight (1885-1972) fathered the famous Chicago School of Economics, whose members are among the most decorated in history. An abstract theorist, Knight emphasized the role of risk and uncertainty in economic affairs, and was philosophically con...

Frank Knight and the Chicago School

Beginning in the early 1840's, a group of German university professors denounced the abstract theories of classical economists, rejecting theoretical analysis in favor of a historical approach. They believed that theories only express what happens in...

The German Historical School of Economics

Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), a British economics professor at Oxford University, developed economics into a more rigorous, professional discipline than ever before. He invented concepts such as price elasticity, the representative firm, consumer's su...

Alfred Marshall and Neoclassicism

Leon Walras (1834-1910) transformed economics from a literary discipline into a mathematical, deterministic science. For the first time, Walras expressed rigorously the view that all markets are related, and that their relationships can be described ...

The Vision of Leon Walras

Institutionalism is an economic point of view that emphasizes the role of social organization and structure in modern economic life. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929), an American son of Norwegian immigrants, was instrumental in creating this school of th...

Thorstein Veblen and Institutionalism

Saving, budgeting, and investing are keys to creating wealth, but there are many different philosophies about how to approach this essential task. The "investment philosophers" offer systematic beliefs about investing that often parallel other system...

Investment Philosophers and Financial Economists

What do professional money managers offer to the individual investor, and to what degree can they be expected to outperform the market? Investors increasingly choose mutual funds, themselves run by money managers, as a preferred way to invest in secu...

Money Managers and Mutual Funds

As the world becomes more economically and culturally integrated, there are vast opportunities for growth, especially as less prosperous countries seize the opportunities of capitalism and the market economy. Hear the success stories and pitfalls, th...

Swiss Gnomes and Global Investing

The institutions and big players of Wall Street shape your financial world in a profound way; many act on behalf of millions of people as they invest pension funds, retirement plans, or other group assets. Investment bankers play a key role for compa...

Deal Makers, Brokers, and Bankers

Investments in tangible assets offer a unique set of opportunities and problems, often related to limited supply (so that price becomes especially sensitive to changes in demand). Learn about the techniques of investors who have succeeded (and failed...

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