Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Many Climate Economists Don’t Believe Climate Economic Models

My latest at IER. Some excerpts: As the numbers indicate, 59 percent—a solid majority—[of the 365 peer-reviewed climate economists] thought that climate change would be beneficial for the global economy at least through the year 2025. Moreover, 37 percent of the experts thought that climate change would be beneficial to the global economy until at least […]

Powerball and the Lucas Critique

I realize a few commentators gave a nod to this consideration, but I don’t think they realized just how critical it is. An excerpt: To see the point, suppose the Powerball official jackpot somehow rose to $1.3 trillion, with a lump-sum payout of $806 billion. Running through the same calculations as above, we might get […]

David Hume Loves 100% Reserve Banking

I’m not sure I fully appreciated this when I read it as a young lad: II.III.4 This has made me entertain a doubt concerning the benefit of banks and paper-credit, which are so generally esteemed advantageous to every nation. That provisions and labour should become dear by the encrease of trade and money, is, in […]

Krugman Wants His Readers to Understand Hillary Is Better Than Republicans

Or so I speculate in the latest episode of Contra Krugman. Also, there’s a special announcement in the opening minutes. Just when you thought Tom and I had plateaued, we take it up a notch.

If Bible Stories Are True, Then We’d Expect Other Cultures to Have Stories of Them as Well

As with just about anything humans argue, there are good and bad versions of the claim that Christianity must be false because other cultures have similar traditions/beliefs dating back earlier. (Gene Callahan’s post prompted me to write on this.) For example, by itself I think it’s a decent argument for an agnostic to say, “There […]

Outsourcing: E. Harding Discovers Krugman Kontradiction on Reich That Makes You Cringe

Frequent Free Advice commentator (who is no slave to the demands of courtesy, I should say) E. Harding posted this link to his analysis of Krugman’s recent book review of Robert Reich. It is absolutely mind-blowing to see how this guy rolls. Look at how Krugman talks now about his thoughts of Reich’s earlier book […]

Potpourri

==> Tribute to the recently deceased Florence King. ==> Arnold Kling on Scott Sumner’s book. ==> I write about Ryan Gosling’s shorts. ==> An interview I did yesterday about Austrian economics and the financial markets. ==> Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator, has had some very interesting posts on Trump. I haven’t seen anyone else analyze […]

Musical Parodies Related to Health Care

My co-author in The Primal Prescription, Doug McGuff, sends along these parodies which will resonate with health care professionals. If that’s you, I encourage you to get our book. We explain why this is happening! (Note that EHR = Electronic Health Record.)