Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Working on the Holidays

Apparently there is a growing backlash against big-box stores opening on Thanksgiving, with threats of boycott in the air: The list of big-box retailers opening their doors on Thanksgiving Day is growing, and so is the list of consumers threatening to shop elsewhere. Macy’s Inc. (NYSE:M) is joining the ranks of retailers offering turkey-day deals […]

Yet More Incontrovertible Evidence That Krugman Believes the Fed Can Create Bubbles

[UPDATE in text.] This is really funny, to see the Krugman defenders in the comments being reduced to such grasping. (In fairness, at least one of the people involved is motivated not by his love for Keynesian policies, but by his love to contradict me.) So let me offer yet even more damning quotations to […]

Yes, Larry Summers Is Saying Central Bank Policy Encourages Bubbles (Which He Thinks Is a Second-Best Solution Because of Secular Stagnation)

OK it took me a bit to understand the point that Keshav (and then Ken B.) were making in response to my Summers/Krugman commentary on bubbles. They (and maybe others, sorry if I’m leaving people out) were saying that yes Summers/Krugman were warning that we would have a string of bubbles, but that no they […]

An Example of Krugman Pooh-Poohing Current Bubble Concerns

In the comments of my recent post, in which I said Krugman was significantly retreating from his earlier stance about Fed policy causing bubbles, naturally some of Krugman’s defenders claimed I was inventing things, and that Krugman has been worried about bubbles all along. Here’s Krugman from May, 2013: So do we have a major […]

Clarifying the “Tax Interaction Effect”

David R. Henderson favorably reviewed Ross McKitrick’s presentation (at IER’s Carbon Tax conference last summer) on the “tax interaction effect,” and then in a follow-up post David pursued Greg Mankiw’s writings on the topic. In the comments of David’s second post, someone wrote: If my microeconomic intuition — that taxing harmful externalities will enhance net […]

So, Are Summers and Krugman Now Confirming That The Austrians Have Been Right About Bubbles?

This week I’m going to talk in-depth about this with Tom Woods–and you really should be listening to all of his shows, they’re great–but let me give just a quick taste. For people who have been following the blogosphere wonk econ debate since 2008, I think you will agree that the following is an accurate […]

Krugman’s IT Expertise Is Now Non-Zero, and Cancer Patients With Canceled Policies Need to Stop Whining

Remember how Krugman admitted last week that he wasn’t going to talk about healthcare.gov, because it was a topic on which he has “zero expertise”? Well apparently he’s a quick study: OK, I just created an Obamacare account for myself…I went all the way through the process at healthcare.gov, stopping before the final step of […]

Thoughts on JFK Assassination

Hey let me add my two cents–everyone else is. A year or two ago I actually spent about a week really diving into this issue. I wanted to see if I thought a reasonable person could adequately assess the evidence without becoming a “buff.” I decided at the end of this inquiry–in which I focused […]