Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Death and Toxics: Krugman’s Botched Commentary on Mercury

Those who already think Krugman is slippery may nonetheless be astounded at what happened in this episode. To be clear, I don’t think Krugman consciously distorted anything here. As I said to my colleague on this, Krugman is usually pretty good at writing something totally misleading but technically defensible. Here, because he trusted a Grist […]

That’s Gotta Hurt!, 2011 Edition

As the clock winds down, we’ve narrowed this year’s contest for “That’s Gotta Hurt!” blog responses to two individuals, David R. Henderson and Steve Landsburg. Let’s review their displays of rapier wit: * On December 27 Henderson wrote a blog post complaining about an advocacy group’s false claim regarding Kim Kardashian’s taxes. The entire post […]

Taking the Bible Seriously

In my last Sunday post (which occurred two weeks ago, because of the issues with my blog host), I said that Christians start running into trouble, if they try to pick and choose which Bible passages they will interpret literally and which metaphorically. In particular, if we try to “soften the edges” by substituting in […]

A Savior Is Born!

I will do a higher-brow post later today, but for now Merry Christmas! I am not a fan of Celine Dion in general, but she really crushes this song.

Pouring Eggnog on Landsburg’s Christmas Carol

[UPDATE below.] In my interactions with Scott Sumner, I picture myself as Luke Skywalker fending off Darth Vader. In contrast, when it comes to Steve Landsburg, I picture myself as Maverick to his Iceman: we’re on the same side, but I want to upstage him. (And yes I’m always the star in my daydreams. If […]

The Rumors of Irish Austerity Are Greatly Exaggerated

A certain Nobel laureate has been pounding the drums lately (e.g. here), pointing out that the awful euro economies prove just how bad fiscal austerity is. In particular, the case of Ireland shows that–as our Keynesian friends like to put it–“contractionary policy is contractionary.” Now in fairness, for all I know maybe lots of people […]

Beware the Portly Bovine

OK as some of you may have noticed, over the past month or so there were a few periods where my blog was down. Let me give the quick summary of what happened with Fatcow, the previous host of my blog. (The following consists not of actual quotes, of course, but my condensed paraphrase. However, […]

2 Legit, 2 Legit 2 Quit

OK I don’t want to jinx it by saying so, but I think the blog migration has been successful and we should no longer get a free–oh wait, I paid for it–ad for Fatcow anymore. I’m dealing with some “day job” stuff right now, but I’ll post on the sordid affair later today. In the […]