News
Category:
Insights (2009-2011)
August 18 2011
The future is now
It is a truism that Western economies face a demographic problem: more older people and fewer working-age people will mean a higher dependency ratio. This future problem, we are told,…
August 16 2011
What’s this ‘we’ stuff?
Alex Tabarrok posted at Marginal Revolution about sticky wages. It’s an interesting bit of mathematics. I can see his point, that sticky wages for employed people can keep the labour…
August 10 2011
Models matter
I’ve been turning this over in my head for weeks. Obviously, the economic/political problems in the US are one of biggest economic issues going, and I’ve not blogged about them.…
July 22 2011
Inchworm, inchworm, measuring the marigolds
NZIER (where I work) has just published a new Insight on the next steps for water policy. The Royal Society recently published an issues paper on ecosystem services. Natural capital…
July 18 2011
Double taxation doublespeak
I generally stay out of tax debates. I don’t know the economic theories, and valid comparisons are difficult to make. This comparison by Rodney Hide (via Kiwiblog) bothered me, however:…
June 7 2011
Tim Harford – reviews
Tim Harford, columnist for the Financial Times and author a new book, Adapt, will be delivering the opening keynote address at the NZAE conference on 29 June in Wellington. The…
May 29 2011
Small business is personal
It started out as a simple question: is a $75,000 liquidator’s fee for the $117,000 sale of a small shop appropriate? Thus I enter the disreputable world of business deaths…
May 3 2011
What did we know, and when did we know it?
There’s been an interesting discussion on some economics blogs about the state of economics knowledge. It’s part of a larger and perennial discussion/debate about what we should research and teach.
April 5 2011
New energy policy
The Government’s new energy policy was released, apparently by accident. Groups and businesses involved in the energy sector have already started commenting on it.
March 28 2011
Economics of blogging about economics
Putting together my first post made me think about the economics of blogging. Blogging is a tournament game: low barriers to entry, with a very few earning fame and fortune.…
March 26 2011
The nuclear power option
There has been a lot of attention given to nuclear power given Fukushima. I don’t know what the real story is, but there are alternative viewpoints to consider. For illustration, here are…
March 2 2011
Initial Christchurch earthquake impact on spending
Nationwide spending through the Paymark electronic payments network dropped 6% from year-ago levels on Tuesday 22 February, the day of the second major Christchurch earthquake, mostly due to a 33%…
March 10 2009
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
We all like success. But do we really understand why some succeed and others do not? Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is a superb book offering some insights. Just as importantly,…
