Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Tom Woods and I Talk About the History of Economic Thought

Right here. If you want to sign up for Liberty Classroom to get access to my super duper course, use this link.

An Example of the Tolerance of the Left

This is really amazing. One tweet is from election night, and the next tweet is two days later–it’s literally the 4th tweet after the first one I show. We are now under total Republican rule. Textbook fascism. Fuck you, white America. Fuck you, you racist, misogynist pieces of shit. G'night. — Laci Green (@gogreen18) November […]

Potpourri

==> My reflections on Trump’s victory. ==> David R. Henderson and David Friedman discuss semi-private military defense in Estonia. ==> Mark Skousen sends me this analysis of the government’s Gross Output (GO) figures, which Skousen argues measure the “Hayekian triangle.” (In contrast, GDP effectively only measures the final stage, consumption, if we are in a […]

Gun Stocks and the Efficient Market Hypothesis

Does it make sense that gun stocks soared when Obama won, and tanked when Trump won? The layperson intuition is obviously, “People rush to buy guns when they think a ban is imminent, and so the higher sales are good for Smith & Wesson stocks.” However, does that make sense? Shouldn’t today’s stock prices reflect […]

Is It Smart to Vote Immorally?

I say no. Some of you were expecting me to gloat, weren’t you? Well I’m not going to. (I was somewhat snarky on Twitter, but only because of people who were so confident beforehand.) Indeed, for those of you horrified by President-Elect Trump, I can say that I was telling people not to vote for him […]

Even Economists Should Check Out My GDP Article

I realized my last excerpt might not have alerted professional economists to the fact that I have some novel (I think?) points on GDP accounting in my latest EconLib piece. Some excerpts: [S]uppose that one method of producing 1,000 cars draws down on the fixed stock of iron ore located in a country’s mines, while […]

Murphy Twin Spin

==> The latest episode of Contra Krugman has Tom and me discussing the FBI. (We are experts.) But for real, some good stuff on affirmative action. ==> My new EconLib is up, on problems with GDP accounting. An excerpt: People often use the GDP formula to erroneously derive conclusions about economic causation. For example, in […]

Trump’s Final Appeal to the Voters

This is a really good ad. I think this is what he had to work with, and he swung for the fences. I think future politics classes will look at this ad the same way they will study, say, the Goldwater campaign. The only other commentary I will make is to note the points in […]