Cafe Hayek is the economics blog written by Don Boudreaux, a professor of economics at George Mason University and, at the time of the 2019 broadcast, a senior fellow at the Mercatus Center. Across four episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, host Bob Zadek returned to the blog as his own regular reading and urged listeners to subscribe to it Trump’s War on Trade (2019). Boudreaux told Zadek he blogs every day at www.cafehayek.com and said the site is named after the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek; he described writing for a non-professional audience, avoiding jargon and mathematics Trump’s War on Trade (2019).
The blog and its author
Zadek introduced Boudreaux in 2009 as a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who had chaired the economics department from 2001 until August of 2009, and as the author of a blog called Cafe Hayek, which Zadek called must-reading and whose address he asked listeners to write down Legalize Insider Trading (2009). Zadek told Boudreaux he had read the blog for the past year and did not miss a day. Introducing him again in 2011, Zadek called Boudreaux his favorite blogger at Cafe Hayek and told listeners to subscribe to his postings, which he described as a wonderful morning read The Second American Revolution – NOW (2011). By 2019 Zadek was calling himself unable to start his day without reading Boudreaux’s posting at Cafe Hayek, describing it as a daily blog and a must-read for anyone with even a vague curiosity about economics and the world at large Trump’s War on Trade (2019).
The supermarket analogy
In a 2022 episode on education savings accounts, Zadek credited a Cafe Hayek post by Boudreaux from about a decade earlier with what he called a wonderful analogy Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022). Zadek asked listeners to imagine supermarkets all owned by the government, with shoppers required to patronize the supermarket in their zip code and told they could spend $100 a week there, rather than choosing where to buy groceries; he asked how the quality of such a government-owned supermarket staffed by government workers and serving compulsory customers would compare with the present situation.
Guest Matt Beienburg agreed the analogy was apt, and extended it: he argued it would be absurd to require everyone to go to one zip code for a supermarket and be handed whatever the government decides they must have as groceries. Beienburg said the distinction matters for ESAs because the program returns taxpayer funds to taxpayers rather than directing public funds to a private entity, and he noted that the Arizona Supreme Court had already ruled on that point Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022).
Across episodes
Two episodes turn directly on the blog: the 2009 insider-trading episode, where Zadek first recommends it, and the 2019 trade episode, where it is recommended again and Boudreaux explains its name and purpose; the 2011 and 2022 episodes reference it only in passing. The treatment changes less than the surrounding arguments: in 2009 Zadek praises Boudreaux’s writing on insider trading, and in 2019 he credits the blog with helping ordinary readers understand basic economics. The 2022 episode is the only one where the blog’s content — the supermarket analogy — is itself a subject of discussion rather than a recommendation Arizona Chooses Students Over Systems - Matt Beienburg (2022). The excerpts show the blog as a constant reference point across thirteen years, but no development in how it is described.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when Cafe Hayek was founded, who besides Boudreaux writes for it, or its publishing platform and business model. They give no readership figures and no reaction from critics of the blog. They also do not report the outcome of the Arizona litigation Beienburg cites or any later treatment of the blog on the program after 2022.