Bob Murphy

Author Archive

What Evidence for Market Monetarism Sumner Giveth, Sumner Taketh Away

There’s no way I can condense the argument down to a few excerpts. In order for you to understand my point here, you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and read Scott Sumner’s whole post, in which he presents two different lines of evidence to argue that “real” shocks don’t cause unemployment while […]

Contra Krugman Episode 5: Who’s Crazy?

Tom and I tackle Krugman’s latest column, wherein he complains about the “con man” Paul Ryan and his (allegedly) insane budget plan.

Things That Make You Go Hmmmm

Sorry blogging has been so sparse lately, but Tom Woods is a slave driver. In the meantime, here are three quotes from economists I read regularly, and my reactions. ==> Alex Tabarrok, in his case for open borders: “What moral theory justifies using wire, wall, and weapon to prevent people from moving to opportunity?” My […]

“Where I Come From…”

People say this to mean, “The code of moral rules and social etiquette that I picked up from my peer group in puberty is superior to the code that you acquired during your period of puberty.” First, I encourage you to acknowledge that on a subjective relative scale, we’re all probably hitting our own moral […]

Ladies and Gentlemen, Introducing…

…the Creator of the universe! I’ve often remarked that critics of Christianity often deploy the following two distinct objections: (1)”The Christian God is a monster because he doesn’t stop the evil people.” and (2) “The Christian God is a monster because he goes ballistic on people for the most trivial ‘infractions’ of his inscrutable and/or […]

Contra Krugman Episode 4

Oh it’s a good one, folks.

More on the Crude Oil Export Ban

I’ve written on this topic before, but at FEE today I made a new observation: There’s another way of seeing the foolishness of the hostility to [U.S.] oil exports. Normally, when it comes to international trade, the layperson is wary of “cheap imports.” Those wily foreigners are always scheming to send us their products to […]

More Murphy Meandering (through) Minimum Wage Literature

At EconLib. Here’s something that might surprise you, but you need the background info that when Krugman told the NYT readers that there is “just no evidence” that minimum wage hikes reduce employment, he linked to a 2010 paper by Dube et al. So with that: If we are discussing proposals to increase the minimum […]