In this issue: Is it right for public employee pension funds to pressure corporate boards to adopt climate change policies? What is an economic recession, exactly? Was dropping nuclear weapons on Japan really necessary to win World War II or was Japan on the verge of surrendering? Can we understand markets without understanding cultures? How do we think about the economies of East Asia? Does the good of man’s soul fit with the logic of capitalism? (It does.)

As always, this issue’s contributors boldly challenge the intellectual status quo, forcing us to consider deeper alternatives that contest the cliché teachings of mainstream academia.

This issue also features the winners of our 2023 Student Essay Contest! The First Place award was won by Phoebe Johnston, a student-athlete at Hillsdale College, who wrote the winning essay “Smith and Cicero on Philosophy in Action.” The second and third place winning essays are also posted. The 2024 Essay Contest is now open for submissions.

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Articles

The Fable of Shareholder Environmental Activism by Government Pensions *

By Raymond Venner

Interpreting Atomic Bomb History: A Reply to Fuller’s “An Economic Case against the Atomic Bombing of Japan”

By Barton J. Bernstein

Interpreting Atomic Bomb History: A Response to Bernstein

By Edward W. Fuller

The East Asian Challenge for Market Liberalism: Toward a Hayekian Context-Specific Response

By Bryan Cheang

Singapore’s Small Development State

By Ryan H. Murphy

War and European Welfare Exceptionalism

By Chris Pope

Student Essay Contest Winners

Smith and Cicero on Philosophy in Action *

By Phoebe Johnston

Pumping Gas and Siphoning Rents: The Political Economy of Self-Service Laws *

By Samuel D. Peterson

Landlords, Banking, Merchants, and European Financial Systems: An Intellectual History of Richard Cantillon’s Innovative Entrepreneurial Theory *

By Meredith Kottom

Reflections

The Classical Liberal Diaspora *

By Michael C. Munger

The Rival Definitions of Economic Recession: Resolved

By John F. Gaski

Tyranny Reverse Engineered, Non-violent Resistance, and the American Heritage *

By Lukas Abelmann

Review Essay

Vivek Ramaswamy on What’s Troubling America *

By D. Eric Schansberg