Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Forgive Others as You Would Want to Be Forgiven

Here’s a quick one for you: Think through all the really obnoxious things you’ve done in your past. If you’re like me, most of them were because you were trying to impress people and/or compensate for some insecurity you had. Looking at your behavior objectively, you now could say, “Yes, I agree that that guy […]

Structural versus Demand-Side Theories of Unemployment

Paul Krugman has a new post–which Scott Sumner calls “very good”–in which he explains why the structural explanations of the recession don’t fit the facts. In contrast (you will not be surprised to hear), Krugman’s own demand-side theory comes out with flying colors. Here’s Krugman: [O]ne strong indicator that the problem isn’t structural is that […]

Employment Ratios: Total, Men, and Women

Tyler Cowen and Scott Sumner are debating over the significance of the sharp decline in the employment ratio (which looks at what percentage of the working-age population is employed, and is a different indicator from the labor force which considers the percentage of those actively seeking employment). Although someone brought it up in his comments, […]

David Friedman versus Me

(I’m never sure whether to refer to myself in the 3rd person on posts like this. I’ve got to do what is best for Bob Murphy, even if it sounds weird.) Here’s the debate we had at Porcfest in June. The only major miscommunication is that Friedman just wanted to talk about methodology, whereas I, […]

A Proposed Apology

[UPDATE: Some people got it in the comments, but just to be sure: This “apology” was a joke; I was just mimicking Krugman’s pseudo-apology in this piece. So if you knew right away that Krugman would never accept the below from Schiff or me, then do what you will with his own mea culpa…] At […]

Private / Government Components of GDP Bask

I want to look at the official GDP stats of the last 10 years and show the breakdown of private/government components of GDP. I went to the FRED website and took Government Consumption Expenditures plus Government Investment to be “Government GDP,” then took the difference between total GDP and that number, to be “Private GDP.” […]

My Position on the Current State of the Economy

I have neither the time nor the stamina to continue with the arguments in the comments of my last post. So let me clarify my position in case anyone cares: 1) Right now we are in the midst of the Great Recession, or the Second Great Depression if you prefer, in the same way that […]

Questioning the Government’s GDP Numbers

Scott Sumner responded to my post on him vs. Schiff by saying he hoped I was joking. No, I’m not. I actually think it’s weird that so many right-wingers endorse Scott’s argument. (To remind you, Scott argues that if price inflation were a lot higher than the government’s numbers, that would mean the economy is […]