Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Holy Melodrama Batman!

Author Michael Chabon has apparently written a horrifying work of nonfiction. Here’s Tyler Cowen’s blurb about the book: “I ended up enjoying this more than I do his trendy fiction. This supposed paean to family life collapses quickly into narcissism, but that’s in fact what makes it work. I was surprised but not shocked by […]

Robert Wenzel Reads My Critique and Decides to End It All

…or something like that. I have a similar tale involving a ladder, near-death, and utter stupidity. My last year at NYU, I lived upstairs in my grandma’s house in Copiague. I was out late drinking and being a hooligan (as all economics PhD students do) and then had to ride the Long Island Railroad for […]

It’s All About Framing

The 3q GDP numbers are out, and Robert Wenzel lets his readers know who the better economic forecaster is: Gross domestic product grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate in 3Q. This does not surprise me. In fact, I have a bet with Bob Murphy, made in January, that it would. This is what I […]

Defending the Superfreaks from Brad DeLong

In my new post at MasterResource, I give the background on Superfreakonomics and then defend Levitt from Brad DeLong’s claims that his views are “just not economics.” An excerpt: DeLong is right, what Levitt said is “not economics.” Rather, it’s a historical claim. Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong, but DeLong can’t trump it by […]

Landsburg Takes It Easy On Dawkins

This morning I had an email from Steve Landsburg in my inbox. I thought that he was either inviting me to co-author a book with him, or wanted to tell me he was using my PIG to Capitalism as the main textbook in his graduate classes. Turns out it was an automatic message letting me […]

The Seasteading Institute’s Annual Report (from last April)

I decided to check in on Patri Friedman and The Seasteading Institute. I’m very excited for them to actually get a floating residence up and running in international waters. I think the oceans will be the frontier of the 21st century. Anyway here is their one-year report [.pdf] from last April. They opened up shop […]

More Fun With the Intertubes

Aristos passes on this neat trick: (1) Go to Google. (2) Type in “Location of Chuck Norris” (3) Click “I’m Feeling Lucky.” Now my question for the internet geeks in the crowd: Did it take a while for this page to become the top hit and for the joke to work? Or were there just […]