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The Independent Review’s Spring 2025 issue features a symposium on a kind of action economists know well: the “ratchet effect.” This phenomenon is described masterfully by Retired Senior Fellow Robert Higgs in his classic work, Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government ([link removed]) . Put simply, the “ratchet effect” refers to how prices, wages, and government spending rise easily, especially during crises (real or created), and rarely go back down, just as a ratchet permits movement only in one direction. Time and again, government has exploited fear to expand its spending and powers…which expansion is almost never reversed.

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** FEATURED IN THIS ISSUE
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** ARTICLES
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Extensions and Expansions of the Ratchet Effect ([link removed])

By Abigail R. Hall, Ryan M. Yonk

War and Presidential Greatness ([link removed])

By Chandler Reilly, Vincent J. Geloso

The Varieties of Ecological Rationality in Decision Making and Their Challenge to Behavioral Economics ([link removed])

By Yulie Foka-Kavalieraki


** BOOK REVIEWS
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The State ([link removed])
By Philip Petit
Reviewed by Phillip W. Magness
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Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality ([link removed])
By Angus Deaton
Reviewed by Phillip W. Magness
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** Daring, clear-headed, and academically rigorous, this is an issue you won't want to miss.
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