What Is Capitalism? (with Mike Munger)

Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org.

We'd love to hear from you. Today is June 17, 2025, and my guest is economist, author, and podcaster Mike Munger of Duke University. He hosts the podcast, The Answer is Transaction Costs, and this is Mike's 50th appearance on EconTalk, which makes him, of course, the Babe Ruth or Henry Aaron of Econ Talk guests or the Barry Bonds if Mike uses steroids, which I doubt, but could be. He was last here in January of 2025. Talking about whether Doge and Elon Musk will make a difference.

And so far he looks like he got that one right. Mike, welcome back to Econ Talk. Russ, it's a pleasure and it's hard to believe that it's 50. This can only mean that you are very old. Exactly.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (80 minutes, 12,960 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.