My guest in this episode is noted immigration expert Madeline Zavodny, professor of economics at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. She is also co-author of Beside the Golden Door: U.S. Immigration Reform in a New Era of Globalization.

Zavodny, an AEI scholar, favors the comprehensive immigration reform bill currently making its way through Congress.

On this week’s Ricochet Money & Politics Podcast, Jim’s guest is economist Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute. Strain began his career in the research group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Before joining AEI, he managed the New York Census Research Data Center, a U.S. Census Bureau research facility.

Strain recently co-authored a study debunking the notion, now widely held in left-of-center circles, that top marginal tax rates could rise to 70%, 80%, or even 90% without crippling the US economy. Just as importantly, Strain argues the moral and values case against those levels of confiscatory taxation.Missing an episode of the Money and Politics podcast will cost you money. Subscribe here.

On this week’s Ricochet Money & Politics Podcast, Jim’s guest is Russell Roberts, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Roberts is also host of the weekly podcast series EconTalk and co-blogs over at Cafe Hayek with colleague Don Boudreaux.

In addition, Roberts is author of several books, including The Price of Everything: A Parable of Possibility and Prosperity (Princeton University Press, 2008). And his two rap videos, created with filmmaker John Papola and “starring” John Maynard Keynes and F.A. Heyek, have more than five million views on YouTube.

This week, Jim Pethokoukis interviews Luigi Zingales, the Robert C. Mc Cormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at University of Chicago, Booth School of Business to discuss the current state of European finances, how they can restore economic prosperity, and how U.S. style entrepreneurship can jump start the Italian and European economies. Be sure to pick up the Professor’s new book A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity.