Murphy completed his Bachelor of Arts in economics at Hillsdale College in 1998. He then moved back to his home state of New York to continue his studies at New York University. Murphy earned his Ph.D. in economics from NYU in 2003 after successfully defending a dissertation on Unanticipated Intertemporal Change in Theories of Interest.

Murphy is married to Rachael Murphy (née Fajardo) with whom he has one son, Joel Clark Murphy, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Murphy is a Christian, and has stated in his writings that "my ethical beliefs are informed by my Christian faith, and I am a firm believer in natural law."

After earning his doctoral degree, Murphy served as Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan, U.S., a role he relinquished in the summer of 2006 when he moved back to New York City. From 2006 until early 2007, Murphy was employed as a research and portfolio analyst with Laffer Associates, an economic and investment consultancy firm.

Murphy is a senior fellow in business and economic studies at the Pacific Research Institute, and is an adjunct scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He writes a column for Townhall.com and has also written for LewRockwell.com. He is an adjunct scholar at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and an economist for the Institute for Energy Research. Murphy appeared before the United States House Committee on Financial Services on 24 July 2008 to discuss oil prices and the United States dollar. His work has been cited by Walter Block, with whom Murphy has also published. Murphy is a frequent radio guest. He appeared on "Free Markets With Dr. Mike Beitler" on the Voice America Business network on October 30, 2008, and has also been featured as a guest on The Political Cesspool.

In 2010, Murphy wrote Lessons for the Young Economist, an introductory textbook aimed at younger students. "The idea is that newcomers to economics ... whether young people or even adults who have never read deeply in the Austrian tradition ... should read this book first and then move on to the works of Hazlitt and Rothbard."

Books

• Chaos Theory (2002) - A short, self-published work composed of two essays on market anarchy; one discussing the production of defense services, and one describing the provision of private criminal and civil justice.

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism (April 2007) - A volume in the best-selling "Politically Incorrect Guide" series published by Regnery Publishing.

• The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal (April 2009)

Murphy has also designed a home study course in Austrian economics (2005), and has written a study guide for Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy and State (with Power and Market) and Ludwig von Mises' Human Action, both published and distributed by the Mises Institute.

Reviews

In the 14 May 2007 edition of Human Events, reviewer Mac Johnson said of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism that,

it takes some discipline to distill complex concepts down to a convenient and accessible form. The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism hits this markTopics covered include price theory, unions, CEO pay, the minimum wage, child labor and anti-discrimination laws, banking, the gold standard, environmental regulations, antitrust law, deficit spending, safety laws, bread and circuses, globalization, free trade, and the new investor class

In a 9 July 2007 review for Barron's Magazine, Gene Epstein declared that the book,

contains more economic wisdom in its fewer-than-200 pages than the average principles textbook several times its length. In clear and often irreverent prose, Murphy makes a compelling case for the unfettered free market, or what his intellectual antagonists would call "free-market fundamentalism."

Although the review is a generally favorable one, Epstein opines that "[o]ccasionally I wish Murphy weren't so irreverent." Referring to the five-question quiz with which Murphy opens the volume, and the answer key Murphy provides, Epstein says "the uninitiated could have benefited from more pointed explanations. I hope Murphy provides these explanations in a subsequent edition." Later in the same column, Epstein compares Murphy's Guide to Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, noting that,

I only wish Sowell were as informed about the economics of the Austrian school as author Robert Murphy. While Basic Economics and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism work well as companion volumes, in the few cases where they seem to disagree...as in the discussion of money and business cycles...Murphy's version is the more trustworthy.