Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Two Funnies From the 5-Year-Old

I was reading my son his bedtime story and he had a long hair in his mouth. So we commented on its yuckiness and so forth, and then he started rubbing his head. He said, “I have lots of hairs.” Then he rubbed my head and said, “You have 2 hairs.” Later on I was […]

The Jackpot Question In Advance

I know many of you simply assume that an internationally known Austrian economist (that’s me) would be ringing in the new year hanging with my boyz in da club, and then we’d take the show back to the hotel to party some mo. Alas, my wife is out of town so I am spending New […]

The Wonders of the Internet

I’ve enjoyed Rick Rolls, and I enjoyed seeing the young Bill O’Reilly explosion when it first surfaced. Can the two be married? Apparently so (HT2 Brad DeLong), and watch out for the F-bomb if you are viewing in a sensitive location (or have morals):

If You Go to a Birthday Party at a Restaurant and Somebody Skips Out, Who Pays Her Bill?

Akal Singh Krau is an extremely interesting guy who is a law student at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). A few months ago he invited me to give my standard doom-and-gloom talk to bum out his peers, and we realized that he literally grew up down the street from where I currently live. Anyway, since […]

Potpourri

* I know we rarely say nice things about Matt Yglesias around here, so I should point out this really good post arguing that the comparison of legislation to sausage making is unfair to the sausage makers. * EPJ links to a very interesting story about how Business Insider got hacked. Really, you should check […]

Bill and I Don’t See Eye to Eye on Estate Taxes

Check out this comment from “Bill” when Alex Tabarrok discussed estate taxes: Having been the surprising beneficiary of an uncle’s demise, I can assure you that estate taxes, or rather the absence of them, are quite a surprising windfall. You see, my uncle never paid taxes. He did all he could ever do to defer […]

Regrets, I’ve Had a Few…

I made a joke comment at MarginalRevolution, and then another commenter wanted me to elaborate, so I did: What I meant was, when I was reading Black’s collection of essays, and hit the one on interest rates as an option, I made an intuitive connection between the major project I was grappling with at the […]

A Quick Note on Recapitalization

In November of 2008 I had a long phone conversation with the impregnable von Pepe, which clarified the typical discussions of the financial crisis in light of my hazy knowledge of accounting. In fact I was so energized after the call that I set out to do a whole series of blog posts sharing my […]