Bob Murphy

Author Archive

You’ve Heard of Moneyball…

…now get a load of the Efficient Majors Hypothesis, or EMH. A sample: EUGENE: All right, it’s worth asking what those fees for active management have actually delivered to the investors. I ran a statistical analysis on the National League all the way back to 1876. Do you know that in every single season, when […]

“Stable Prices”: A Lesson in Fed-Speak

There is a lot to say about Janet Yellen’s remarks today about the Fed’s latest meeting, but I wanted to highlight something that always bothers me in these affairs. From the Bloomberg article: Yellen and her Fed colleagues are debating how much longer to keep interest rates near zero as they get closer to their […]

The Market Loves Jackie Robinson

My latest article at LibertyChat. An excerpt: There was another example of this pattern very soon afterwards in the movie. Jackie Robinson’s team (he was not yet with the Dodgers organization) was traveling on a bus and stopped for gas. He got off the bus and approached the bathroom at the station, but the white […]

Potpourri

==> Tyler Cowen elicits outrage from his readers (in the comments) when he writes, “[T]his story will not end with a “no” vote from Scotland, unless it is strongly decisive. Regardless of the result, allowing this referendum to go forward likely will go down as one of the greatest unforced errors in recent times.” ==> […]

Couples Therapy

OK, I opened Pandora’s Box with this post, so I might as well close it. (You’ll have to read the post and skim the comments to get up to speed.) In the below, I’ll walk through the analysis for the village having a total of one, two, and three couples. (Note that the couples have […]

The Most Narcissistic Post of All Time

I’m not making this up, somebody is writing up a post on my contributions to economic education. He even asked me for some of my favorite quotations on economics in general, and energy economics in particular. So, uh, if any of you have any candidates of “great Murphy quotes,” let me know. I’m arrogant, but […]

Game Theory, Rational Women, and Dead Husbands

I also manage to contradict Tyler Cowen in this one. There’s a lot going on, it’s a jumbled mess. Just click through if you’re interested.

Potpourri

==> I point out Krugman’s extremely misleading commentary on the fast food strike. ==> You guys all forgot about Human Action’s 65th birthday, didn’t you? ==> This is a neat puzzle about the implications of common knowledge etc. ==> I’m not going to write on it anymore, but a comparable perspective on plea bargains that […]