Bob Murphy

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==> Saw this floating around on Facebook. There was a similar horror story here in Nashville about a family with a special needs child who really hated going to this particular new school, and eventually an employee broke down and told the family that their kid was being isolated for hours at a time, because […]

David Beckworth vs. His Critics on the Market for Apples

David Beckworth (here and here) is taking on the hard-money enthusiasts by challenging one of their central claims. David emailed me about this–and by the way he has a good sense of humor–so I’m pretty sure he wants me to rip him. Kind of like when Terry Gross had Don Rickles as a guest on […]

Making Pete Leeson the Scapegoat for My Humor

I used to think Steve Landsburg’s “More Sex Is Safer Sex” essay was the perfect example of how Swift would mock neoclassical economics…except that Steve was serious. But now Pete Leeson leaves Steve in the dust: Abstract This paper develops a theory of rational human sacrifice: the purchase and ritual slaughter of innocent persons to […]

Regression Bask

[UPDATE below.] I’m seeing someone do something in a paper that strikes me as odd. So let me ask some of you stats guys what you think: Suppose I run a regression to see what effect independent variables X1, X2, …, Xn have on Y. I come up with my regression coefficients on each of […]

Romer vs. Romers?

Earlier this year, Obama’s former head of the Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer, weighed in on the tax debate: AT least since Calvin Coolidge, politicians have trumpeted the supply-side benefits of cutting marginal income tax rates. Lower rates will unleash economic growth and the cuts will largely pay for themselves — or so it’s […]

Paul Krugman Boosts LMR Circulation

Wow, just when Carlos and I interview Peter Schiff in the November Lara-Murphy Report, Krugman rips into him here: Some readers may recall the “Peter Schiff was right” campaign of 2009, a sort of public-relations blitz claiming that Schiff, an Austrian-oriented commentator, had foreseen everything correctly. It wasn’t really true even then… What the heck?! […]

We Already Went Over the Fiscal Cliff

My latest article at The American Conservative. Some excerpts: The hemming and hawing over the looming “fiscal cliff” is akin to passengers fighting over who gets to sit in the first class seats in a jumbo jet that just ran out of fuel. The U.S. government already sent the country over the cliff years ago; […]