Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is?

Jeff Hummel passes along this op ed by William Shugart on daylight saving: Although daylight-saving time was sold politically as an energy-conservation measure, it does no such thing. Studies conducted in Indiana prior to 2006, when that state operated under three different time regimes, show either no difference in energy consumption or a small increase […]

Murphy PIGs: Everything Must Go! The Prices Are Insane!

When I give a talk somewhere, I don’t want to carry a bunch of books on me, so I just buy some directly from the publisher and have them shipped to the site. Of course I err on the side of optimism (better to come back with extra books rather than turn people away empty-handed), […]

More Stimulus Arithmetic

In preparation for an op ed, I spent a half hour Saturday morning playing with the interactive map at the most transparent administration in history’s Recovery.org website. As of Halloween, here are some of the regional breakdowns in terms of stimulus money awarded, received, and jobs saved (according to the recipients). Of course these figures […]

Holy Apology, Batman!

Oops. I went off the handle on Tyler Cowen and Bryan Caplan because of their over-the-top denunciations of Michael Chabon’s decision to get his son circumcised. In particular, I couldn’t believe Bryan described reading the section as seeing “the face of evil.” Well, I just read the relevant chapter last night, and yeah, I see […]

SNL Clip on a Lazy Sunday

I’m sure this is quite dated but if you don’t have a TV, it’s new to you too… (HT2 Thinklings)

The Gold Standard and the Great Depression

Krugman had been bashing gold for a while, so I rushed to its defense. Wherever there is a commodity in distress, I’ll be there.

Those Evil Insurers

I’m not going to get the wording exactly right, but at the bottom of the hour the AM news break featured a reporter saying something like this: A new study shows that women in Tennessee are having a hard time getting insurance because…they’re women. The study put out by Blah Blah Blah found that women […]

A Little Stimulus Arithmetic

As is my wont, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today as I ate my Arby’s sandwich. (I always get the Market Fresh ones; my body is a temple.) He was complaining about some news story in which the Obama administration’s claimed 30,000 jobs “created or saved” by some stimulus spending turned out to be […]