BOOKS
Ian Vasquez, Fred McMahon, Ryan H. Murphy, and Guillermina Sutter Schneider. The Human Freedom Index 2023. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. 2021. 2022. 2023.
James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall, and Ryan H. Murphy. Economic Freedom of the World 2023 Annual Report. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. 2018. 2019. 2020. 2021. 2022. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. Markets against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private. Lanham: Lexington Books. 2020.
SELECT JOURNAL ARTICLES
Colin O;Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "The Dynamics of Non-Intervention: Applying the Dynamic Common Correlated Effects Estimator to State-Level Economic Freedom." Applied Economics. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Clear Expectation of Cultural Betterment in the Face of Rising Living Standards." Rationality and Society. 35, no. 3: 338-365. 2023. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "State Capacity, Economic Freedom, and Classical Liberalism." Constitutional Political Economy 34, no. 2: 165-187. 2023. [Listen to AI generated podcast summary.]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom without Quality of Government." Journal of Private Enterprise 37, no. 4: 21-42. 2022. Winner of paper of the year at Journal of Private Enterprise for the year 2022,
Ryan H. Murphy. "Breaking Wagner's Law: Which Countries Have the Most Limited Government?" Public Finance Review 50, no. 4: 484-509. 2022.
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "An Index Measuring State Capacity, 1789-2018." Economica 89, no. 355: 713-745. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Quality of Legal Systems and Property Rights by State: A Ranking and their Implications for Economic Freedom." Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 50, no. 1: 29-45. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "Applying Panel Vector Autoregression to Institutions, Human Capital, and Output." Empirical Economics 57, no. 6: 1633-1652. 2019. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption." Journal of Bioeconomics 21, no. 2: 111-122. 2019. [SSRN version] Named in 2021 as part of special collection of articles published in the journal.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Psychopathy by U.S. State: A Translation of Regional Measures of the Big Five Personality Traits to Regional Measures of Psychopathy." Heliyon 5, no. 3: e01306. 2019. [SSRN version] [Psychopath Data] As of June 2023, this is the 88th most downloaded paper in the history of SSRN.
OTHER PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Contestable Monopolies on Violence: Polycentricity, Rebel Groups, and Institutional Quality." Civil Wars. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Not Following the Script: When Institutional Development is Uneven." Economic Affairs 44, no. 2: 338-352. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Fundamentals of Institutional Quality and Economic Freedom." Journal of Developing Areas 58, no. 1: 209-220. 2024. [online supplementary materials]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Prediction Markets as Meta-Episteme." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 83, no. 2: 383-392. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Mapping Inflation to Economic Freedom in the Post-COVID Era." Journal of Institutional Economics 20: e16. 2024. [online supplementary materials]
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Freedom Through Taxation: The Effects of Fiscal Capacity on the Rule of Law." European Journal of Law and Economics. 56: 69-90. 2023. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Measuring Open Access Orders." Journal of Institutional Economics 19, no. 5: 618-634. 2023. [Online supplementary materials] [SSRN version] [DATA]
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "The Expansive Corridor: Testing Acemoglu and Robinson (2019)." Journal of Development Studies 59, no. 7: 1060-1075. 2023. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy, Ellen Taylor, and Dean Stansel. "Economic Freedom at Metropolitan Statistical Area Borders." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 82, no. 2: 141-149. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Constitution of Ambiguity: The Effects of Constitutions on Economic Freedom." Economic Affairs 42, no. 2: 240-258. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "On Whether the Size of Government Belongs in Economic Freedom Indices." Econ Journal Watch 19, no. 1: 47-57. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Soft Stuff of Institutional Development." Journal of Private Enterprise 36, no. 2: 37-66. 2021. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Plausibly Exogenous Causes of Economic Freedom." Journal of Bioeconomics 23, no. 1: 85-105. 2021. [SSRN version]
Chien-Yuan Sher, Nai-Wei Chen, Yu-Hsi Liu, and Ryan H. Murphy. “The Impact of Soil-Liquefaction Information Disclosures on Housing Prices: Evidence from Kaohsiung, Taiwan.” Japanese Economic Review 72, no. 2: 217-241. 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "Assessing State Capacity Libertarianism." Cato Journal 40, no. 3: 735-767. 2020.
Robert Lawson, Ryan H. Murphy, and Benjamin Powell. "The Determinants of Economic Freedom: A Survey." Contemporary Economic Policy 38, no. 4: 622-642. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy, Meg Tuszynski, and Jeremy Jackson. “Some Dynamics of Socioeconomic Relationships: Well-Being, Social Capital, Economic Freedom, Economic Growth, and Entrepreneurship.” American Journal of Entrepreneurship 13, no. 1: 4-44. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Corporations as the Outgroup." Man and the Economy 7, no. 1: 20190008. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom Variables Endogenous to Business Cycles." Journal of Financial Economic Policy, 12, no. 1: 65-75. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Democracy Dies in Recession? A Descriptive Analysis of Aggregate Demand Shortfalls and Regime Transition." Economic Affairs 40, no. 1: 63-76. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Liberalizing, State Building, and Getting to Denmark: Analyzing Twenty-First Century Institutional Change." Journal of Institutional Economics 15, no. 6: 933-950. 2019. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption." Journal of Bioeconomics 21, no. 2: 111-122. 2019. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Governance and the Dimensions of Autocracy." Constitutional Political Economy 30, no. 2: 131-148. 2019. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Psychopathy by U.S. State: A Translation of Regional Measures of the Big Five Personality Traits to Regional Measures of Psychopathy." Heliyon 5, no. 3: e01306. 2019.
Press coverage of working paper version in The New York Times and many other news outlets. I recommend the coverage by Politico.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Long-Run Effect of Government Ideology on Economic Freedom." Economic Affairs 39, no. 1: 101-114. 2019. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The State Economic Modernity Index: An Index of State Building, State Size and Scope, and State Economic Power." Economics of Governance, 20, no. 1: 73-101. 2019. [SSRN version]
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. "What Matters More? Institutions or Specifications? A Critical Assessment of the Correlates of Institutional Development." Institutions and Economies 11, no. 1: 1-22. 2019.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Imperfect Democracy and Economic Freedom." Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice 33, no. 2: 197-224. 2018. [SSRN version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Ryan H. Murphy and Robert A. Lawson. "Extending the Economic Freedom of the World Index to the Cold War Era." Cato Journal 38, no. 1: 265-284. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "And the IMF Said, Let There Be Data, and There Was Data: Private Capital Stocks in the Eastern Bloc." Econ Journal Watch 15, no. 3: 290-300. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. “The Best Cases of 'Actually Existing Socialism'.” The Independent Review 23, no. 2: 283-295. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy and Alex Nowrasteh. "The Deep Roots of Economic Development in the U.S. States: An Application of Putterman and Weil." Journal of Bioeconomics 20, no. 2: 227-242. 2018. [Working Paper Version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Lauren R. Heller, Robert A. Lawson, Ryan H. Murphy, and Claudia R. Williamson. “Is Human Trafficking the Dark Side of Economic Freedom?” Defence and Peace Economics 29, no. 4: 355-382. 2018.
Press coverage in Reason. See also here.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Perils of Buying Social Capital Locally." Journal of Private Enterprise 33, no. 2: 67-81. 2018. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy and Taylor Leland Smith. "Aggregate Demand Shortfalls and Economic Freedom." Review of Austrian Economics 31, no. 1: 111-122. 2018. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Dwight R. Lee and Ryan H. Murphy. "An Expressive Voting Model of Anger, Hatred, Harm and Shame." Public Choice 173, no. 3-4: 307-323. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy and Alex Nowrasteh. "U.S. Immigration Levels, Urban Housing Values, and Their Implications for Capital Share." Economic Affairs 37, no. 3: 411-421. 2017. [Working Paper Version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Diseconomies of Do-It-Yourself." The Independent Review 22, no. 2: 245-255. 2017. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Exogenous Resource Shocks and Economic Freedom." Comparative Economic Studies 59, no. 3: 243-260. 2017. [SSRN Version]
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Do Institutions Mitigate the Risk of Natural Resource Conflicts?" Contemporary Economic Policy 35, no. 3: 532-541. 2017. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy and Jiawen Chen. "A Simple Empirical Investigation into the Optimal Size of the NGDP Target and Level Targeting." Journal of Economics and Finance 41, no. 2: 354-369. 2017. [SSRN Version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Kissing Babies to Signal You Are Not a Psychopath." Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics 9, no. 3-4: 217-225. 2016.
Press coverage in Psychology Today and Inverse.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Minimum Wages and Appropriation of Quasi-Rents." Economics Bulletin 36, no. 4: 2298-2300. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. “Economic Freedom of North America at State Borders.” Journal of Institutional Economics 12, no. 4: 885-893. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Beggaring Thy Neighbor at the State and Local Level." Journal of Financial Economic Policy 8, no. 4: 532-539. 2016. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Wise Technocrats or Black Helicopters? Intergovernmental Organizations and Economic Freedom.” Economic Affairs 36, no. 2: 145-154. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Robert A. Lawson, Ryan H. Murphy, and Claudia R. Williamson. “The Relationship between Income, Economic Freedom, and BMI.” Public Health 134: 18-25. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy and Rick Weber. "Immigration Causes American Businesses to Fail and That Is a Good Thing." Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy 5, no. 1: 63-72. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Named "Highly Commended Paper" by 2017 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Willingness-to-Pay for Caplanian Irrationality." Rationality and Society 28, no. 1: 52-82. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Rational Irrationality Across Institutional Contexts.” Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 21, no. 1-2: 67-78. 2015.
J.R. Clark, Robert Lawson, Alex Nowrasteh, Benjamin Powell, and Ryan H. Murphy. “Does Immigration Impact Institutions?” Public Choice 163, no. 3-4: 321-335. 2015. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Benjamin Powell and Ryan H. Murphy, “Nutritional Efficiency Wages and Unemployment: Where’s the Beef?” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 97, no. 2: 405-413. 2015. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy, "Heterogeneous Moral Views in the Stateless Society," Libertarian Papers 7, no. 1: 39-54. 2015
Ryan H. Murphy, "The Impact of Economic Inequality on Economic Freedom," Cato Journal 35, no. 1: 117-131. 2015. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy, "What Do Recent Trends in Economic Freedom of the World Really Tell Us?," Economic Affairs 35, no. 1: 135-150. 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, “Unconventional Confidence Bands in the Literature on the Government Spending Multiplier.” Econ Journal Watch 12, no. 1: 72-83. 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, “The Unconstrained Vision of Nassim Taleb,” The Independent Review 19, no. 3: 427-34. 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, "A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Free Banking and Central Bank NGDP Targeting," Journal of Private Enterprise 29, no. 1: 25-39. 2013.
SHORTER PIECES, BOOK REVIEWS, BOOK CHAPTERS, AND NON-REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
Ryan H. Murphy. "Actually Existing Liberalization." In Oxford Handbook of Private Enterprise, Edward Stringham, ed. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake." Review of Austrian Economics. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom of the World in the Universe of Measuring Institutions." In Handbook of Research on Economic Freedom, Niclas Berggren, ed. Edward Elgar, p. 49-60. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom, 1950-2020." In Handbook of Research on Economic Freedom, Niclas Berggren, ed. Edward Elgar, p. 32-48. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Singapore's Small Developmental State." The Independent Review 28, no. 3: 441-452. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Steady State Economic Freedom." Economics and Business Letters 12, no. 2: 132-136. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Review of Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose by Stefan Dercon.” Public Choice 196: 217-223. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Freedom Stands: A Rejoinder to Ott." Econ Journal Watch 19, no. 2: 242-246. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less." The Independent Review 26, no. 2. 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of The MVP Machine: How Baseball's Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players." Review of Austrian Economics 34: 337-340. 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Socialist Calculation Fails: By How Much, and Due to What?" Libertas: Segunda Epocha 5, no. 2. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economics is Whatever the Comparative Advantage of Economists Is: A Comment on Leeson (2020)." Journal of Institutional Economics 16, no. 4: 553-556. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "The Champions of Capitalism? National Leaders and the Institutional Channel." Applied Economics Letters 27, no. 8: 647-650. 2020.
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. “Economic Freedom of the World in the 1950s and 1960s.” In Economic Freedom of the World 2019 Edition, by James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall and Ryan H. Murphy. Vancouver: Fraser Institute, p. 189-198. 2019.
Robert Gelfond and Ryan H. Murphy. “A Call for Out-of-Sample Testing in Macroeconomics.” Libertas: Segunda Epoca 4, no. 1: 1-11. 2019. [SSRN version] [Systematized Literature Review]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Reply to Michael C. Munger." The Independent Review 23, no. 2: 301-303. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy and Luke D. Yeom. "The Long-Run Impact of Agricultural Diversity on Economic Freedom at the Local Level." Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 48, no. 1: 1-6. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of Choice." Contemporary Sociology 47, no. 2: 184-185. 2018.
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom and Growth Specification Debate: A Retrospective." Applied Economics Letters 25, no. 15: 1038-1040. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Immigration and Its Effect on Economic Freedom: An Empirical Approach." Cato Journal 37, no. 3: 531-538. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy and Eric Li. "The Final Nail in the Cross of Gold." Libertas: Segunda Epoca 2, no. 1: 81-89. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy. “A Short Empirical Note on State Misery Indexes.” Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 46, no. 2: 186-189. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Are Strong States Key to Reducing Violence? A Test of Pinker." Libertarian Papers 8, no. 2: 328-334. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Measuring Economic Freedom: A Comparison of Two Major Sources: A Comment.” Journal of Private Enterprise 31, no. 3: 69-91. 2016.
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. “Does Antitrust Policy Promote Competition?” Applied Economics Letters 23, no. 14: 1034-1036. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. “The Plucking Model, the Great Recession, and Austrian Business Cycle Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 18, no. 1: 40-44. 2015.
Robert Lawson and Ryan Murphy, “Measuring Institutions and Policies Across Countries,” in Economic Behavior, Economic Freedom, and Entrepreneurship by Richard Cebula, Joshua C. Hall, Franklin G. Mixon, and James E. Payne, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2015.
WORKING PAPERS ONLINE
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Contestable Monopolies on Violence: Polycentricity, Rebel Groups, and Institutional Quality." 2023.
OTHER SCHOLARLY OR POLICY PUBLICATIONS
Ryan H. Murphy. "Sizing up the Size of Government." In Bridwell Institute 2021-2022 Report, p. 2-8. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "Anti-Growth Safetyism." Working in Progress, October 13th, 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "This Is What Peak Culture Looks Like." Works In Progress, May 20th, 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Can We Cut Government Spending?” Regulation 41, no. 2. Summer 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Valuing the Government-Spending Multiplier: Why Monetary Offset Must Be Recognized." Mercatus on Policy. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Do-It-Yourself and Distrusting Markets." Regulation 39 (4), Winter 2016/2017.
Ryan H. Murphy. “The Deep Causes of Today’s Struggling U.S. Economy.” NCPA Issue Brief no. 196. 2016.
Press coverage in CNBC.
Ryan H. Murphy. The New Aristocrats: A Cultural and Economic Analysis of the New Status Signaling. Adam Smith Institute Briefing Paper. 2016.
Press coverage in The Daily Mail, The Guardian, and The Spectator.
Ryan H. Murphy. “How States Can Effectively End Federal Income Taxation – and Why They Should.” Regulation, 38 (2), Summer 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, “A Rent-Seekers Tax?” Regulation 37 (2), Summer 2014.
Ryan H. Murphy and Sophia Morales, “Sweeping Past Cape Wind,” Regulation 36 (4), Winter 2014.
Robert A. Lawson, Saurav Roychoudhury, and Ryan Murphy, "The Economic Gains from Eliminating U.S. Travel Visas,” Cato Institute Development Bulletin No. 19. February 2014.
Ryan H. Murphy, How to Think About Job Creation and Spending: A Primer, Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Institute, October 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy and Paul Bachman, “The Public Sector ‘Union’ Effect: Pushing Up Unfunded Pension Liabilities and State Debt,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. May 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, “You Didn’t Build That: The Occupational Licensure in CT,” Hartford, CT: Yankee Institute for Public Policy. May 2013.
David Tuerck, Paul Bachman, and Ryan H. Murphy, “Peer Review of ‘The Economic, Utility Portfolio, and Rate Impact of Clean Energy in North Carolina.,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. April 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, "Tolls: Road Testing Free Market Ideas to Drive Better Roads With Less Traffic,” Hartford, CT: Yankee Institute for Public Policy. March 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, "Fiscally Illiberal: State and Local Projects Cannot Create Jobs Responsibly," Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. January 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, Amy Purpura, and Malia Dalesandry, "Strict Liability for Fracking: Risks Should Fall on Wall Street, Not Main Street," Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. October 2012
David Tuerck, Paul Bachman, and Ryan H. Murphy, “The Economic Impact of the Budgetary Savings from the Wisconsin Budget Repair Act,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. April 2012
David Tuerck, Paul Bachman, and Ryan H. Murphy, “The Cost and Economic Impact of New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Initiative,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. July 2011.
Ian Vasquez, Fred McMahon, Ryan H. Murphy, and Guillermina Sutter Schneider. The Human Freedom Index 2023. Washington, DC: Cato Institute. 2021. 2022. 2023.
James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall, and Ryan H. Murphy. Economic Freedom of the World 2023 Annual Report. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. 2018. 2019. 2020. 2021. 2022. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. Markets against Modernity: Ecological Irrationality, Public and Private. Lanham: Lexington Books. 2020.
SELECT JOURNAL ARTICLES
Colin O;Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "The Dynamics of Non-Intervention: Applying the Dynamic Common Correlated Effects Estimator to State-Level Economic Freedom." Applied Economics. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Clear Expectation of Cultural Betterment in the Face of Rising Living Standards." Rationality and Society. 35, no. 3: 338-365. 2023. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "State Capacity, Economic Freedom, and Classical Liberalism." Constitutional Political Economy 34, no. 2: 165-187. 2023. [Listen to AI generated podcast summary.]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom without Quality of Government." Journal of Private Enterprise 37, no. 4: 21-42. 2022. Winner of paper of the year at Journal of Private Enterprise for the year 2022,
Ryan H. Murphy. "Breaking Wagner's Law: Which Countries Have the Most Limited Government?" Public Finance Review 50, no. 4: 484-509. 2022.
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "An Index Measuring State Capacity, 1789-2018." Economica 89, no. 355: 713-745. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Quality of Legal Systems and Property Rights by State: A Ranking and their Implications for Economic Freedom." Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 50, no. 1: 29-45. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "Applying Panel Vector Autoregression to Institutions, Human Capital, and Output." Empirical Economics 57, no. 6: 1633-1652. 2019. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption." Journal of Bioeconomics 21, no. 2: 111-122. 2019. [SSRN version] Named in 2021 as part of special collection of articles published in the journal.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Psychopathy by U.S. State: A Translation of Regional Measures of the Big Five Personality Traits to Regional Measures of Psychopathy." Heliyon 5, no. 3: e01306. 2019. [SSRN version] [Psychopath Data] As of June 2023, this is the 88th most downloaded paper in the history of SSRN.
OTHER PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Contestable Monopolies on Violence: Polycentricity, Rebel Groups, and Institutional Quality." Civil Wars. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Not Following the Script: When Institutional Development is Uneven." Economic Affairs 44, no. 2: 338-352. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Fundamentals of Institutional Quality and Economic Freedom." Journal of Developing Areas 58, no. 1: 209-220. 2024. [online supplementary materials]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Prediction Markets as Meta-Episteme." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 83, no. 2: 383-392. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Mapping Inflation to Economic Freedom in the Post-COVID Era." Journal of Institutional Economics 20: e16. 2024. [online supplementary materials]
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Freedom Through Taxation: The Effects of Fiscal Capacity on the Rule of Law." European Journal of Law and Economics. 56: 69-90. 2023. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Measuring Open Access Orders." Journal of Institutional Economics 19, no. 5: 618-634. 2023. [Online supplementary materials] [SSRN version] [DATA]
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "The Expansive Corridor: Testing Acemoglu and Robinson (2019)." Journal of Development Studies 59, no. 7: 1060-1075. 2023. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy, Ellen Taylor, and Dean Stansel. "Economic Freedom at Metropolitan Statistical Area Borders." American Journal of Economics and Sociology 82, no. 2: 141-149. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Constitution of Ambiguity: The Effects of Constitutions on Economic Freedom." Economic Affairs 42, no. 2: 240-258. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "On Whether the Size of Government Belongs in Economic Freedom Indices." Econ Journal Watch 19, no. 1: 47-57. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Soft Stuff of Institutional Development." Journal of Private Enterprise 36, no. 2: 37-66. 2021. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Plausibly Exogenous Causes of Economic Freedom." Journal of Bioeconomics 23, no. 1: 85-105. 2021. [SSRN version]
Chien-Yuan Sher, Nai-Wei Chen, Yu-Hsi Liu, and Ryan H. Murphy. “The Impact of Soil-Liquefaction Information Disclosures on Housing Prices: Evidence from Kaohsiung, Taiwan.” Japanese Economic Review 72, no. 2: 217-241. 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "Assessing State Capacity Libertarianism." Cato Journal 40, no. 3: 735-767. 2020.
Robert Lawson, Ryan H. Murphy, and Benjamin Powell. "The Determinants of Economic Freedom: A Survey." Contemporary Economic Policy 38, no. 4: 622-642. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy, Meg Tuszynski, and Jeremy Jackson. “Some Dynamics of Socioeconomic Relationships: Well-Being, Social Capital, Economic Freedom, Economic Growth, and Entrepreneurship.” American Journal of Entrepreneurship 13, no. 1: 4-44. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Corporations as the Outgroup." Man and the Economy 7, no. 1: 20190008. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom Variables Endogenous to Business Cycles." Journal of Financial Economic Policy, 12, no. 1: 65-75. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Democracy Dies in Recession? A Descriptive Analysis of Aggregate Demand Shortfalls and Regime Transition." Economic Affairs 40, no. 1: 63-76. 2020. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Liberalizing, State Building, and Getting to Denmark: Analyzing Twenty-First Century Institutional Change." Journal of Institutional Economics 15, no. 6: 933-950. 2019. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Rationality of Literal Tide Pod Consumption." Journal of Bioeconomics 21, no. 2: 111-122. 2019. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Governance and the Dimensions of Autocracy." Constitutional Political Economy 30, no. 2: 131-148. 2019. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Psychopathy by U.S. State: A Translation of Regional Measures of the Big Five Personality Traits to Regional Measures of Psychopathy." Heliyon 5, no. 3: e01306. 2019.
Press coverage of working paper version in The New York Times and many other news outlets. I recommend the coverage by Politico.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Long-Run Effect of Government Ideology on Economic Freedom." Economic Affairs 39, no. 1: 101-114. 2019. [SSRN version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The State Economic Modernity Index: An Index of State Building, State Size and Scope, and State Economic Power." Economics of Governance, 20, no. 1: 73-101. 2019. [SSRN version]
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. "What Matters More? Institutions or Specifications? A Critical Assessment of the Correlates of Institutional Development." Institutions and Economies 11, no. 1: 1-22. 2019.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Imperfect Democracy and Economic Freedom." Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice 33, no. 2: 197-224. 2018. [SSRN version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Ryan H. Murphy and Robert A. Lawson. "Extending the Economic Freedom of the World Index to the Cold War Era." Cato Journal 38, no. 1: 265-284. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "And the IMF Said, Let There Be Data, and There Was Data: Private Capital Stocks in the Eastern Bloc." Econ Journal Watch 15, no. 3: 290-300. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. “The Best Cases of 'Actually Existing Socialism'.” The Independent Review 23, no. 2: 283-295. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy and Alex Nowrasteh. "The Deep Roots of Economic Development in the U.S. States: An Application of Putterman and Weil." Journal of Bioeconomics 20, no. 2: 227-242. 2018. [Working Paper Version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Lauren R. Heller, Robert A. Lawson, Ryan H. Murphy, and Claudia R. Williamson. “Is Human Trafficking the Dark Side of Economic Freedom?” Defence and Peace Economics 29, no. 4: 355-382. 2018.
Press coverage in Reason. See also here.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Perils of Buying Social Capital Locally." Journal of Private Enterprise 33, no. 2: 67-81. 2018. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy and Taylor Leland Smith. "Aggregate Demand Shortfalls and Economic Freedom." Review of Austrian Economics 31, no. 1: 111-122. 2018. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Dwight R. Lee and Ryan H. Murphy. "An Expressive Voting Model of Anger, Hatred, Harm and Shame." Public Choice 173, no. 3-4: 307-323. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy and Alex Nowrasteh. "U.S. Immigration Levels, Urban Housing Values, and Their Implications for Capital Share." Economic Affairs 37, no. 3: 411-421. 2017. [Working Paper Version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Diseconomies of Do-It-Yourself." The Independent Review 22, no. 2: 245-255. 2017. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Exogenous Resource Shocks and Economic Freedom." Comparative Economic Studies 59, no. 3: 243-260. 2017. [SSRN Version]
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Do Institutions Mitigate the Risk of Natural Resource Conflicts?" Contemporary Economic Policy 35, no. 3: 532-541. 2017. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy and Jiawen Chen. "A Simple Empirical Investigation into the Optimal Size of the NGDP Target and Level Targeting." Journal of Economics and Finance 41, no. 2: 354-369. 2017. [SSRN Version Note: final version underwent significant revisions]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Kissing Babies to Signal You Are Not a Psychopath." Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics 9, no. 3-4: 217-225. 2016.
Press coverage in Psychology Today and Inverse.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Minimum Wages and Appropriation of Quasi-Rents." Economics Bulletin 36, no. 4: 2298-2300. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. “Economic Freedom of North America at State Borders.” Journal of Institutional Economics 12, no. 4: 885-893. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Beggaring Thy Neighbor at the State and Local Level." Journal of Financial Economic Policy 8, no. 4: 532-539. 2016. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Wise Technocrats or Black Helicopters? Intergovernmental Organizations and Economic Freedom.” Economic Affairs 36, no. 2: 145-154. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Robert A. Lawson, Ryan H. Murphy, and Claudia R. Williamson. “The Relationship between Income, Economic Freedom, and BMI.” Public Health 134: 18-25. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy and Rick Weber. "Immigration Causes American Businesses to Fail and That Is a Good Thing." Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy 5, no. 1: 63-72. 2016. [SSRN Version]
Named "Highly Commended Paper" by 2017 Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence.
Ryan H. Murphy. "The Willingness-to-Pay for Caplanian Irrationality." Rationality and Society 28, no. 1: 52-82. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Rational Irrationality Across Institutional Contexts.” Journal des Économistes et des Études Humaines 21, no. 1-2: 67-78. 2015.
J.R. Clark, Robert Lawson, Alex Nowrasteh, Benjamin Powell, and Ryan H. Murphy. “Does Immigration Impact Institutions?” Public Choice 163, no. 3-4: 321-335. 2015. [SSRN Version]
See also here.
Benjamin Powell and Ryan H. Murphy, “Nutritional Efficiency Wages and Unemployment: Where’s the Beef?” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 97, no. 2: 405-413. 2015. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy, "Heterogeneous Moral Views in the Stateless Society," Libertarian Papers 7, no. 1: 39-54. 2015
Ryan H. Murphy, "The Impact of Economic Inequality on Economic Freedom," Cato Journal 35, no. 1: 117-131. 2015. [SSRN Version]
Ryan H. Murphy, "What Do Recent Trends in Economic Freedom of the World Really Tell Us?," Economic Affairs 35, no. 1: 135-150. 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, “Unconventional Confidence Bands in the Literature on the Government Spending Multiplier.” Econ Journal Watch 12, no. 1: 72-83. 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, “The Unconstrained Vision of Nassim Taleb,” The Independent Review 19, no. 3: 427-34. 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, "A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Free Banking and Central Bank NGDP Targeting," Journal of Private Enterprise 29, no. 1: 25-39. 2013.
SHORTER PIECES, BOOK REVIEWS, BOOK CHAPTERS, AND NON-REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
Ryan H. Murphy. "Actually Existing Liberalization." In Oxford Handbook of Private Enterprise, Edward Stringham, ed. Oxford University Press. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of Restarting the Future: How to Fix the Intangible Economy by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake." Review of Austrian Economics. Forthcoming.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom of the World in the Universe of Measuring Institutions." In Handbook of Research on Economic Freedom, Niclas Berggren, ed. Edward Elgar, p. 49-60. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom, 1950-2020." In Handbook of Research on Economic Freedom, Niclas Berggren, ed. Edward Elgar, p. 32-48. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Singapore's Small Developmental State." The Independent Review 28, no. 3: 441-452. 2024.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Steady State Economic Freedom." Economics and Business Letters 12, no. 2: 132-136. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Review of Gambling on Development: Why Some Countries Win and Others Lose by Stefan Dercon.” Public Choice 196: 217-223. 2023.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Freedom Stands: A Rejoinder to Ott." Econ Journal Watch 19, no. 2: 242-246. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of 10% Less Democracy: Why You Should Trust Elites a Little More and the Masses a Little Less." The Independent Review 26, no. 2. 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of The MVP Machine: How Baseball's Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players." Review of Austrian Economics 34: 337-340. 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Socialist Calculation Fails: By How Much, and Due to What?" Libertas: Segunda Epocha 5, no. 2. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Economics is Whatever the Comparative Advantage of Economists Is: A Comment on Leeson (2020)." Journal of Institutional Economics 16, no. 4: 553-556. 2020.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "The Champions of Capitalism? National Leaders and the Institutional Channel." Applied Economics Letters 27, no. 8: 647-650. 2020.
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. “Economic Freedom of the World in the 1950s and 1960s.” In Economic Freedom of the World 2019 Edition, by James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, Joshua Hall and Ryan H. Murphy. Vancouver: Fraser Institute, p. 189-198. 2019.
Robert Gelfond and Ryan H. Murphy. “A Call for Out-of-Sample Testing in Macroeconomics.” Libertas: Segunda Epoca 4, no. 1: 1-11. 2019. [SSRN version] [Systematized Literature Review]
Ryan H. Murphy. "Reply to Michael C. Munger." The Independent Review 23, no. 2: 301-303. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy and Luke D. Yeom. "The Long-Run Impact of Agricultural Diversity on Economic Freedom at the Local Level." Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 48, no. 1: 1-6. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Review of Choice." Contemporary Sociology 47, no. 2: 184-185. 2018.
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. "Economic Freedom and Growth Specification Debate: A Retrospective." Applied Economics Letters 25, no. 15: 1038-1040. 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Immigration and Its Effect on Economic Freedom: An Empirical Approach." Cato Journal 37, no. 3: 531-538. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy and Eric Li. "The Final Nail in the Cross of Gold." Libertas: Segunda Epoca 2, no. 1: 81-89. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy. “A Short Empirical Note on State Misery Indexes.” Journal of Regional Analysis & Policy 46, no. 2: 186-189. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Are Strong States Key to Reducing Violence? A Test of Pinker." Libertarian Papers 8, no. 2: 328-334. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Measuring Economic Freedom: A Comparison of Two Major Sources: A Comment.” Journal of Private Enterprise 31, no. 3: 69-91. 2016.
Robert Lawson and Ryan H. Murphy. “Does Antitrust Policy Promote Competition?” Applied Economics Letters 23, no. 14: 1034-1036. 2016.
Ryan H. Murphy. “The Plucking Model, the Great Recession, and Austrian Business Cycle Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 18, no. 1: 40-44. 2015.
Robert Lawson and Ryan Murphy, “Measuring Institutions and Policies Across Countries,” in Economic Behavior, Economic Freedom, and Entrepreneurship by Richard Cebula, Joshua C. Hall, Franklin G. Mixon, and James E. Payne, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing. 2015.
WORKING PAPERS ONLINE
Colin O'Reilly and Ryan H. Murphy. "Contestable Monopolies on Violence: Polycentricity, Rebel Groups, and Institutional Quality." 2023.
OTHER SCHOLARLY OR POLICY PUBLICATIONS
Ryan H. Murphy. "Sizing up the Size of Government." In Bridwell Institute 2021-2022 Report, p. 2-8. 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy and Colin O'Reilly. "Anti-Growth Safetyism." Working in Progress, October 13th, 2022.
Ryan H. Murphy. "This Is What Peak Culture Looks Like." Works In Progress, May 20th, 2021.
Ryan H. Murphy. “Can We Cut Government Spending?” Regulation 41, no. 2. Summer 2018.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Valuing the Government-Spending Multiplier: Why Monetary Offset Must Be Recognized." Mercatus on Policy. 2017.
Ryan H. Murphy. "Do-It-Yourself and Distrusting Markets." Regulation 39 (4), Winter 2016/2017.
Ryan H. Murphy. “The Deep Causes of Today’s Struggling U.S. Economy.” NCPA Issue Brief no. 196. 2016.
Press coverage in CNBC.
Ryan H. Murphy. The New Aristocrats: A Cultural and Economic Analysis of the New Status Signaling. Adam Smith Institute Briefing Paper. 2016.
Press coverage in The Daily Mail, The Guardian, and The Spectator.
Ryan H. Murphy. “How States Can Effectively End Federal Income Taxation – and Why They Should.” Regulation, 38 (2), Summer 2015.
Ryan H. Murphy, “A Rent-Seekers Tax?” Regulation 37 (2), Summer 2014.
Ryan H. Murphy and Sophia Morales, “Sweeping Past Cape Wind,” Regulation 36 (4), Winter 2014.
Robert A. Lawson, Saurav Roychoudhury, and Ryan Murphy, "The Economic Gains from Eliminating U.S. Travel Visas,” Cato Institute Development Bulletin No. 19. February 2014.
Ryan H. Murphy, How to Think About Job Creation and Spending: A Primer, Boston, MA: Beacon Hill Institute, October 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy and Paul Bachman, “The Public Sector ‘Union’ Effect: Pushing Up Unfunded Pension Liabilities and State Debt,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. May 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, “You Didn’t Build That: The Occupational Licensure in CT,” Hartford, CT: Yankee Institute for Public Policy. May 2013.
David Tuerck, Paul Bachman, and Ryan H. Murphy, “Peer Review of ‘The Economic, Utility Portfolio, and Rate Impact of Clean Energy in North Carolina.,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. April 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, "Tolls: Road Testing Free Market Ideas to Drive Better Roads With Less Traffic,” Hartford, CT: Yankee Institute for Public Policy. March 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, "Fiscally Illiberal: State and Local Projects Cannot Create Jobs Responsibly," Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. January 2013.
Ryan H. Murphy, Amy Purpura, and Malia Dalesandry, "Strict Liability for Fracking: Risks Should Fall on Wall Street, Not Main Street," Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. October 2012
David Tuerck, Paul Bachman, and Ryan H. Murphy, “The Economic Impact of the Budgetary Savings from the Wisconsin Budget Repair Act,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. April 2012
David Tuerck, Paul Bachman, and Ryan H. Murphy, “The Cost and Economic Impact of New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Initiative,” Beacon Hill Institute Policy Study. July 2011.