Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Free Advice for Aspiring Authors

If you are writing a book dealing with banking, and during the first draft you put in numbers or claims that you need to verify before handing in the manuscript, don’t use “[CHECK]” as the note to yourself. Choose a different term, like “[VERIFY]”.

Quick Thoughts on Prince Jonathan

I stayed up late working on the book–it’s done today kids–and I forgot to do my Sunday religious post. So here it is, better late than never: Yesterday my pastor discussed the story of King Saul’s son Jonathan, who took his armor bearer and walked into the Philistine camp. They double-handedly killed more than 20 […]

Now Krugman Wants to Repeat Smoot-Hawley Too

In his quest to rationalize repeating the exact policies followed by Hoover and FDR, Paul Krugman has now endorsed protectionism. That’s right, the Krugman who won his Nobel (Memorial) Prize for his work on trade theory now says: The economic case against protectionism is that it distorts incentives: each country produces goods in which it […]

Martin Weitzman: Do "Fat Tails" Destroy Cost-Benefit Analysis?

Over at Master Resource I sketch what’s going on with Martin Weitzman’s critique of standard models of uncertainty in the climate change debate. Some excerpts: Weitzman argues that in this situation, standard cost-benefit analysis (CBA) breaks down. When some of the potential outcomes involve the deaths of hundreds of millions of people, not to mention […]

A Disagreement on the Efficacy of Government Regulation

Over at Env-Econ, some of the commenters were taking pot shots at the free market in the wake of the salmonella outbreak from the Georgia peanut butter plant. (Incidentally that is a factory I’m talking about, not a photosynthetic organism that secretes peanut butter.) I said: Ah yes, I think we had this same argument […]

Murphy Mention at National Review

John Hood links to my Atlanta Journal Constitution op ed (via PRI) on the fallacy being stimulating consumption.

Talking Heads on NPR

I just heard Ky Risdall interview Megan McArdle and Felix Salmon on the financial crisis. I think I lost the use of polysyllabic words. Salmon was cockily saying that nationalization was necessary, in the sort of “at least I’m the adult here who can make the hard choices” tone. For her part, McArdle said something […]

The Road to Serfdom: CA City Bans Smoking In Your Own Car

I am getting old enough so that the “slippery slope” warnings against government intrusions now have extra validity for me, because I actually lived through this stuff. I vividly remember when the government started cracking down on cigarettes in the 1990s, that “right-wingers” warned, “What’s next? Are they going to start regulating fatty foods? Once […]