Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Deflation Propaganda Campaign Claims Bryan Caplan

Bryan Caplan defends Scott Sumner (already we should suspect trouble) and remarks: Looking at the numbers makes it hard to believe in a quick return to full employment. During the 1980-2 recession, there was high inflation. All employers had to do to get real wages down to full employment levels was (a) avoid nominal wage […]

Markets in Everything

Has anyone else noticed that MarginalRevolution has a featured ad (in the top left) that blames all of our health care woes on the insurance companies? A lot of the time, the ads have the catch phrase, “If the insurance companies win, we lose.” Note that this doesn’t seem to be a random google ad. […]

Gold Keeps Chugging

Dang! As of 12:30pm EST, gold is up 1.17% this session. Right now the (future) contract is trading at $1056.60 / ounce.

How to Solve Chicago’s Violent Crime Problem

If you want to ruin your day, check out this article from yesterday’s WSJ on the violence plaguing some of Chicago’s schools: The videotaped beating death of a 16-year-old boy who wandered into a street brawl is focusing attention once again on how dangerous it is to be a teenager in Chicago.…An image from a […]

Search Engines Today, Foreheads Tomorrow

Does anyone else find Google’s barcode logo a bit creepy? Or is it just an evangelical Christian hangup?

Geithner Lectures Americans on Saving More

The audacity of these people is astonishing: “Everyone is going to have to come to terms with the fact that we are going to save more in the United States,” Geithner said in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit, conducted on Sunday in Istanbul, and due to appear on Oct. 8. “If the U.S. […]

Workers Would Rather Quit Than Be Laid Off

That’s it, that’s all you need, to answer the Nobelist’s query. You don’t need to list papers on “factors of confidence and option value,” “sticky information,” etc. etc., except insofar as those opaque phrases mean, “Workers would rather quit than be laid off.” It also doesn’t really have anything to do with the timing. Let […]

Two Items on Drug Legalization

Since I’ve been discussing the issue, two items: * Mark Thornton passed along NORML’s estimate of the fiscal benefits to California’s government if they legalized marijuana. (Note I haven’t reviewed their study so I don’t know if it’s any good. If this were a blog devoted to cheap jokes, I would say something like, “I […]