Bob Murphy

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Two Views of R&R

[UPDATE below. Make sure you read that if you are just now stumbling upon this post.] Man, Reinhart and Rogoff are getting hammered by the Keynesians lately. First of all, you’ve got commentators (here’s but one example of many) who are making it sound like all the “austerity” the last 3 years was due to […]

Ariel Rubinstein Has Amazed Me

At NYU my “field” was Game Theory, because I figured, if we’re going to formally model economic actions, then let’s get nuts. I have elsewhere criticized the big guns of game theory when they try to talk to the layperson. So, when Tyler Cowen linked Ariel Rubinstein’s article titled, “How Game Theory will solve the […]

Heads Krugman Wins, Tails Austerians Lose

Man I am just really down lately, because the great experiment in European austerity has proven to be a disaster for “my side” of the debate. You had all these austerians predicting that the way to reassure bond markets and get yields down on fiscally suspect European nations was to make bold promises about reform. […]

Just the Facts, Ma’am: “Testing” Keynesian Theory

I realized that I was being too fair to “Lord Keynes” in the last post, since total GDP statistics include government expenditures. To really test whether the Obama stimulus episode seems more consistent with the Keynesian versus the Austrian story, let’s look at what happened to gross private investment (I couldn’t find any FRED series […]

Believing Is Seeing, Part II

“Lord Keynes” provided the most beautiful confirmation possible in the comments of my recent post. Recall that I had teased a guy for simply assuming the Keynesian theory was correct, when interpreting the economic statistics. Lord Keynes upbraided me: As opposed to your last post, where the data strongly confirms the Keynesian story, but not […]

Jesus Attempts to Explain Why God Allows Evil

I was going to read my son another chapter from the second Harry Potter book, but he requested a story from “the Bible…your Bible.” (By which he meant, not the children’s animated book of Bible stories in his room.) So I flipped through and read him this, from Matthew 13: 24-30: 24 Another parable He […]

Believing Is Seeing

Presumed “wonk” Neil Irwin writes: The [latest GDP] report details this stuck-in-neutral economy. It’s not without bright spots, but there aren’t enough of them, and they aren’t bright enough to make up for the forces dragging the recovery, most significantly a drop in government spending. Indeed, the biggest culprit in the weak report was the […]

Why Economists Will Soon Be Lynched

I am going to accelerate my transition into stand-up comedy, because the public is going to turn on economists very, very soon. Look at this: 1) Krugman argues that severe US fiscal austerity explains our dismal economic growth. 2) I say no, there hasn’t been fiscal austerity. In fact, we have record-high spending, and that […]