Bob Murphy

Author Archive

American People Don’t Know Basic Economics Because Economists Have Misled Them

[UPDATE: As Keshav and David pointed out in the comments, I made a bonehead mistake in the original draft of this post, which ironically strengthens my underlying point rather than hurting it. I’ve corrected the mistake below, and in a follow-up post I’ll deal with this issue more directly.] Steve Landsburg recently wrote a post […]

Yes Scott Sumner Is “the NGDP Guy”

I explain why he has been pigeonholed. For example, he has said the Fed is more powerful than God because it controls NGDP. More substantively, I produce the following chart: So yes, Scott is right that some economists foolishly thought monetary policy was tight in the Weimar Republic because nominal interest rates were high. But […]

Potpourri

==> Dan Sanchez weighs in on Bitcoin and the regression theorem. ==> CATO’s monetary conference. ==> Some Protestant pastors want to separate marriage and State. ==> I’m not going to bother writing it up, but you can see in the comments here how I try to resolve Scott Sumner’s running feud with Paul Krugman. I […]

Landsburg Agrees That Paul Krugman (Often) Is an Anti-Economist

Since I’m still getting ready to hammer him for his defense of Gruber post, I want to make sure to heap kudos on Steve’s most recent post on Krugman, regarding Krugman’s post defending Obama’s immigration announcement. Some key excerpts: Dammit, I hate this stuff. Krugman says (and I agree with him) that it’s cruel to […]

“The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Christ”

One of my (online) students sent me this essay from his brother, Ashby Camp. Besides the content of the essay, I appreciated its very nature, which Camp describes in the opening: When I say “the historical case for Jesus’ resurrection,” I mean I am going to approach the question without relying on the inspiration or […]

Potpourri

==> My wise-guy post over New York City’s goal to reduce CO2 emissions. ==> My post on conservatives and carbon taxes. (More academic.) ==> Greek philosophers playing Texas Hold ‘Em. Super geeky. ==> Elon Musk says we’re close to killer robots. ==> Richard Ebeling talks about the Berlin Wall. ==> Good news! New peer-reviewed paper […]

Steve Landsburg Reminds Us How Little Math We Know

This is a really neat post, if you want to see Steve explain the accomplishments of the recently deceased mathematician Alexander Grothendieck. It would be pointless for me to try to convey the substance of the post; you should just read it if you are interested. However, let me once again observe that Steve is […]

Krugman Shows How Consumption Taxes Raise and Lower Price Inflation

Back in 2012, some people were worried that rising price inflation in the UK meant that the Bank of England should tighten. But Krugman explained why that was wrong: But, say the small-[output]-gap people, if Britain is deeply depressed relative to potential, we should be seeing deflation, whereas there’s actually inflation. Is this a decisive […]