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Posts Tagged ‘Kevin Murphy’

Economist Kevin Murphy Talks NBA Lockout Negotiations

We’ve written a lot about University of Chicago economist Kevin Murphy. He teaches at the Becker Center on Chicago Price Theory, where Steve Levitt is the director. Murphy was a MacArthur Genius Fellow back in 2005, and Levitt readily admits that Murphy is the smartest person he knows.

This fall, Murphy has been working with the NBA players union in its negotiations with team owners over the NBA lockout. Steve Aschburner of NBA.com sat down with Murphy for a lengthy and very interesting Q&A on the tricky economics of the NBA, and what role Murphy is playing. Here are a few highlights:


Addicted to Rationality

Here’s another hilarious xtranormal send-up – this time lampooning the Becker/Murphy theory of rational addiction.


Becker and Murphy on the Stimulus Package

Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy write today in The Wall Street Journal about their concerns regarding the stimulus package. There are no two economists in the world who I respect more than Becker and Murphy. Whatever your political bent, when these two write something, you should think hard about their arguments.


True Genius: Kevin Murphy wins MacArthur “Genius” Award

I’ve had the chance to meet a lot of smart people in my life. Without question, Kevin Murphy is the smartest of them all. Not only is he smart, but he is also one of the kindest, most loyal, and most generous people I’ve known. So I could not be happier that the MacArthur Foundation today named him as one . . .


Forget my approach, an even freakier way to measure cocaine use

Our last Freakonomics column was about the indirect approach that Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, Kevin Murphy, and I used to try to measure crack cocaine use across places and over time in U.S. cities and states. Read all about it here. Some researchers in Italy took a very different, very bizarre approach, as discussed in a British newspaper article reprinted . . .


Freakonomics in the Times Magazine: Up in Smoke

In the August 7, 2005, Freakonomics column in the New York Times Magazine, Dubner and Levitt ask a simple question: Whatever happened to crack cocaine? Crack was the scourge of the 1980’s, leading to endless misery and violence. Today, it is rarely mentioned in the news media. Does that mean that crack has vanished? This blog post supplies additional research material.


An economist’s dream

Not many people dream the dreams of economists. But for someone like me, I was able to live out a little fantasy today. As part of the Center I run, we had a conference call with our board of advisors. In the room or on the phone were many of the greatest living economists: Gary Becker, Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, . . .