Your Health Choices: Should You Make Them, or Should Government?

Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives.  In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

An End to the Counterproductive Cuban Embargo

President Obama’s announcement to overhaul U.S. policy toward Cuba is historic. And according to Cato scholar Juan Carlos Hidalgo, president’s move should be uncontroversial. “U.S. policy toward Cuba has been a blatant failure,” says Hidalgo. “It has not brought about democracy to the island and instead provided Havana with an excuse to portray itself as the victim of U.S. aggression. …The 114th Congress should pick up where the president left off and move to fully end the trade embargo and lift the travel ban on Cuba.”

The 2014 Cato Institute Surveillance Conference

Never in human history have people been more connected than they are today — nor have they been more thoroughly monitored. Over the past year, the disclosures spurred by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have drawn public attention to the stunning surveillance capabilities of the American intelligence community, and the unprecedented volume of data they collect from millions of people around the world. Cato’s inaugural Surveillance Conference featured a diverse array of experts: top journalists and privacy advocates; lawyers and technologists; intelligence officials; and those who’ve been targets of surveillance, culminating in a surprise appearance by Edward Snowden himself.

Recent Commentary

Obamacare and the Rule of Law

The implementation of the healthcare law has consisted of a series of lawless executive actions. The “IRS tax credit rule” now before the Supreme Court is no different.

Multimedia

A Path to Lower Spending in 2015

December 30, 2014

Events

Of Special Note

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Cato Pocket Constitution

To encourage people everywhere to better understand and appreciate the principles of government that are set forth in America’s founding documents, the Cato Institute published this pocket-size edition.

The Tyranny of Silence

The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech

With Sony’s decision to pull its movie “The Interview” from public viewing due to threats of violence, the issues of self-censorship in the face of intimidation and the nature of free speech have rapidly moved again to the forefront of public debate. No one knows this debate better than Flemming Rose, the editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten who in 2005 published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, inciting a worldwide firestorm. In his new book, The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech, published by the Cato Institute (and selected by the Economist as one of the Best Books of 2014), Rose not only recounts that story, but takes a hard look at attempts to limit free speech….offering an extraordinarily authentic perspective that can be fully applied to the debate now raging over a motion picture, threats of violence, and what it means to live in a multireligious, culturally borderless world.