Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Dan Klein and IUC: May I Have Another, Sir?

OK I am supposed to be balancing my checkbook tonight, so that’s why I continue to harp on this issue of Dan Klein and interpersonal utility comparisons. Gene Callahan and Daniel Kuehn have chimed in. I have just two more clarifications, and then it’s double entry bookkeeping time, baby. Goethe, eat your heart out. (1) […]

Modern Utility Theory and Interpersonal Utility Comparisons

I want to elaborate on my earlier post in which I temporarily ceased being The Fonz of Economics due to a problematic question that Dan Klein had used to separate the men from the boys among the libertarians. First, let me be clear: Tyler Cowen clearly knows about everything I am going to say in […]

Now David Beckworth Should Really Be Jealous

I saw this at Karl Smith’s blog:

Econ Journeyman Watch

Sometimes my hunches turn out to be so correct that I surprise myself. (Other times, for example on late 2009 official CPI, not so much.) So there I am, minding my own business skimming Tyler Cowen’s blog about Daniel Klein’s admission that libertarians can be just as biased when it comes to economics questions as […]

The Comment Gremlins Strike Again

Folks, I really have no idea why this keeps happening. But, once again WordPress decided to lock all the comments of previous posts. I turned the default back to open, but it appears I have to manually unlock all previous posts. I did it (I think) for the most recent ones, but if you wanted […]

Guest Post: Praising the Financial/Economic Punkosphere

[Frequent commenter James Miller submitted this to me a good two months ago, and I somehow managed to just post it today. But, he should appreciate my punky behavior.–RPM] Praising the Financial/Economic Punkosphere by James E. Miller Last December, the New York Times ran a piece entitled “10 Annual Year in Ideas.” The number one […]

Krugman the Modern Day Bastiat?? C’est ne pas!

(If my French is ungrammatical, I am coining a new phrase.) David R. Henderson asked who today’s Bastiat is. People were throwing out obvious candidates like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, but Karl Smith kept arguing that it was clearly Paul Krugman. (BTW it was an honor just to be nominated, and don’t worry I’m […]

Krugman Bask

Does anybody know of a Krugman quotation along the lines that we can’t trust politicians with Power X, because they will inevitably abuse it and not use it in the way the experts think is “optimal”? I don’t have a quotation in mind; I’m just wondering if he ever said anything like that. In particular, […]