Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Jon Stewart vs. Paul Krugman

I had to dig this up for some people who hadn’t heard of it. Thought I would share (again) with you folks.

“The fraud of classical liberalism”

I always like to skim articles like this to see how someone could come up with a title like that. In my (obviously defensive) reaction, I would say the author points to things that are clearly not consistent with classical liberalism–like using armies to engage in “free trade”–or he is simply mistaken about historical causality–like […]

Two Interpretations of Jesus’ Atonement

This is intended for believing Christians, and perhaps even there will only interest Protestants. I was working through different interpretations (coming from professing Christians) on the same stipulated events from Biblical history. I should stress that both sides can point to ample scriptural evidence for their perspective, and yet they paint quite different pictures of […]

Murphy Magic

Some of this may be repeats, but I haven’t posted my stuff in a while and need to catch up… ==> Ep. 49 of the Lara-Murphy Show covers Chapter 2 of our new book, The Case for IBC. ==> Ep. 50 of the Lara-Murphy Show is a bonus episode, featuring my remarks at the Yale […]

The “Calculation Problem” and “Knowledge Problem” Are Distinct

I know there is some bad blood on this topic, but I am being sincere in my praise for Hayek. Anyway: Mises and Hayek were both brilliant economists who made numerous contributions in the Austrian tradition. Yet is inaccurate to refer to “the Mises-Hayek position” in the famous socialist calculation debate, and to do so […]

The Worthy King

I’m sharing this on a Tuesday because I was traveling and don’t want to keep missing my “Sunday” posts… In church, because of the lyrics of a song we were singing, I started thinking about the character of Jesus. (If you’re not a believer, you can still appreciate the “character of Jesus” as depicted in […]

Fun With Graphs! Murphy vs. Erdmann

I don’t want to put too much stock in this post. My main point is to demonstrate that you can tell just about any story you want, if you play with FRED long enough. This is why Russ Roberts asks people when they present their slides showing p-values: “How many regressions did you run before […]

Potpourri

==> The latest Contra Krugman tackles Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). ==> Wendy McElroy writes about privacy and the (modern) connection to cryptocurrencies. ==> A few people on Twitter were giving me a high-five for my old article on trade deficits and fiat currency. I re-read it and thought, “I agree. That *was* a good article.” […]