Welcome back to Fraser Insight, the Fraser Institute’s U.S. newsletter. This summertime issue marks a milestone for Insight—our 60th issue. Thanks to you, we are going strong and growing.

This issue of Insight highlights our In Focus section, which always showcases in-depth research and analysis. In this issue, we feature two new additions to Fraser Institute’s Essential Scholars series: one focused on John Stuart Mill and one focused on the long-term influence of the Austrian School of economics.

Our In Print section highlights timely commentaries, op-eds and blogs. This issue features pieces covering President Biden’s tax-and-spend plans; climate and the environment; new angles on government responses to COVID-19; and several other pressing public policy topics.

Finally, the In Context section offers information on the upcoming EFNA Network conference, which happily returns to an in-person format this year.

We encourage you to share Fraser Insight with friends and colleagues by inviting them to sign up for Insight here. Visit our website, which serves as a storehouse for cogent commentary and in-depth analysis—all from a free-market perspective. Follow us on Twitter. Join us on Facebook. And check out the In Touch section for more contact info.

In recent years, a strand of economic literature has argued that warming negatively affects not only the level of economic activity, but also the rate of income growth.

Voters in the U.S. and Canada have essentially voted for more risk when moving oil—more leaks and spills, more rail accidents, and higher-cost transportation.

Just because someone—even a scientist—issues warnings of impending doom doesn’t mean a company’s managers are obliged to instantly change their operations and issue warnings to shareholders.

Some national governments and social justice activists argue for waiving patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines as a “one-off,” in light of the pandemic’s effects.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced she would revoke a permit that allows Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline to cross the Straits of Mackinac, citing environmental concerns.

Under the Biden plan, the overall corporate tax rate in the United States will rise to more than 32 percent, the highest rate among developed countries.

Public policy has moved farther to the left, with President Biden proposing a major increase in the size, scope and cost of government.

Some of the president’s spending plans are financed entirely with debt. But the White House realizes there’s a limit to that approach, so it’s proposing several tax increases.

Proponents of a larger welfare state are already advocating to make European-style per-child allowances a permanent part of America’s welfare state, which would mean a multi-trillion dollar long-run increase in the size of government. The United States could very well be on the proverbial road to serfdom.

One of the potential long-term consequences of the COVID pandemic and recession is that experts will be elevated to positions of authority, influence and decision-making not commensurate with their actual knowledge—and contrary to the principles of democracy.

Mill’s 1869 On Liberty made the case for three forms of freedom: thought, conscience, and expression; tastes, pursuits, and plans; and to join other like-minded individuals for a common purpose. Mill believed that freedom was an essential part of human happiness—and how “human life…becomes rich, diversified, and animating.” Liberty holds a special place in Mill’s overall conception of happiness, serving both as a means to obtaining individual and societal happiness, and also as an essential component of being human.

The origin of the Austrian School of economics is the publication of Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics in 1871. Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Léon Walras are considered the co-founders of the “marginal revolution” in economics, a shift to the marginal utility theory of value from the labor theory of value. The revolutionists argued that value is not based on the amount of labor expended but reflects how useful people perceive the commodity to be in satisfying their ends.

New medicines are only accessible by the public after they have been granted regulatory clearance by a jurisdiction’s responsible body, such as Health Canada, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Past studies have shown that Health Canada takes longer to approve medicines (from the time of submission) and approves fewer medicines than its American and European counterparts. A delay in the availability of new drugs in one country in comparison with another can have two sources: a difference in approval time (efficiency) and a difference in when the drug was submitted for approval in the first place. In order to capture the total delay in timely access to new medicines, this study undertakes a drug-by-drug comparison for dates of approval granted by Health Canada, the FDA, and the EMA (including both the European Union’s centralized approval procedure and its mutual recognition approach).

After shifting to a virtual format in 2020, due to government travel restrictions, we are happy to report that the 2021 EFNA Network conference is back on track as an in-person event. As in years past, SMU-Dallas will serve as host for the event, which brings together members of Fraser’s EFNA Network from all across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. If your U.S.-based organization is interested in joining the EFNA Network, contact Alan Dowd, who serves as the network’s managing director, at [email protected].