Archive for September 2007
Subsidies for driving
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 30, 2007
On this blog we’ve talked a lot about how driving is undertaxed and overused. An aspect of this that we haven’t addressed yet is the funding mechanism for roads in New Zealand. At present, government spending on roading exceeds the revenue gained from road taxes. Essentially this means that road use is subsidised by all [...]
Lifting the cap on GP rates
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 28, 2007
People are making a big deal about the fact that National wants to lift the cap on GP (general practitioner) rates. Now I know pretty much nothing about health policy, especially not New Zealand health policy, but I can see some of the merit in getting rid of the cap.
Now before you kill [...]
Orchardists and Labour productivity
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 28, 2007
NZPA released a story about an Orchardist that tried to get out of paying some seasonal workers for a public holiday. All well and good, the contractual obligations of an employer is a topic that is out of my league. However, the final line of the article got my interest.
“When employers treat their workers well [...]
Trust the professionals?
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 27, 2007
I was talking to a keen cyclist a few days ago who told me that he never fixes so much as a puncture on his gleaming pride and joy. “I’d rather leave it to a professional who knows what they’re doing than risk stuffing it up myself,” he told me. I was bemused at the [...]
Counter-signalling
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 26, 2007
Yesterday’s post on dress codes and signalling drew a comment pointing to Tyler Cowen’s reference to ‘counter-signalling’. TC refers to Steve Jobs dressing down as a counter-signal because he doesn’t need to dress up to show his seniority and importance. It’s a bit of a misleading term because a counter-signal isn’t really a signal at [...]
Infinite time and economics
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 26, 2007
I was just looking at an interesting post from Philosophy, et cetera. They are discussing value when we have ‘infinites’. Now if we are looking at points in time with infinite resources this would be pointless for economists, as economics is the study of scarcity. If there are infinite resources, consumption is [...]
Dress codes in the office
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 25, 2007
I have always wondered why corporate offices require a dress code for employees, even when the employees never see the outside world. Tyler Cowen blogs about corporate dress and makes a couple of interesting points, but it doesn’t really address my particular curiosity. He’s inspired by a reader who points out not many people are [...]
De-regulate health care?
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 24, 2007
I generally enjoy The Economist’s blog, but I think they’ve taken their free-market philosophy a little far with their post on the “de facto monopoly of the American Medical Association in the distribution of licences to practice medicine.” Their claim is that the AMA extracts large rents from their monopoly and unfairly prevents other from [...]
The marginal revenue of movies
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 24, 2007
I was reading the Dilbert blog the other day, and Scott Adams was trying to talk about a Dilbert movie. Before starting to ask the blogging community whether they thought it would be a hit, he linked to this article, and asked why movie producers keep making so many R rated films, when G [...]
Airlines and competition
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 21, 2007
I’ve been thinking about the fact that AirNZ is going to shut down Freedom Air in March 2008. With Freedom Air, Air NZ was able to serve the budget end of the market and the higher quality end by selling a differentiated product. However, the company could have simply offered different services in [...]
Fortnight in numbers
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 21, 2007
This time instead of being lazy I’ve actually been a bit busy, so here are some numbers from the last fortnight.
Net annual arrivals fell to 8,730 in August
Tourist arrivals rose 5.8%pa in August
CA deficit came in at 8.2% of GDP in June
Electronic sales rose 9.2%pa in August
Core retail sales rose 5.0%pa in July
House sales fell [...]
Where have all the socialists gone?
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 20, 2007
Over at Cato Unbound the health care debate rages on. David Cutler and Dana Goldman reply to Robin Hanson’s original article by almost agreeing with him. They both begin by acknowledging that much of our current health care spending is wasted. The gist of their criticism is that when you reduce health care consumption then [...]
Carbon taxes again…
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 20, 2007
It looks like Matt’s not the only brilliant economist campaigning for Pigovian taxation of carbon emissions. Now Greg Mankiw’s weighed in on the side of taxation. To those who claim a carbon tax is regressive because poor people are forced to live in the suburbs and drive more than the wealthy, Mankiw says
Gilbert Metcalf, a [...]
Fed cuts rates to 4.75%
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: September 19, 2007
I don’t have time to say much, but I will say that the Fed’s decision to cut rates 50 basis points was silly. They are pretty much telling the market that they will bail them out when the shit hits the fan from taking on overly risky investments. Although this decision may [...]
Slavery and growth
Posted by: rauparaha on: September 18, 2007
Many writers have noted that colonisation contribute to the sad state of many African economies today. Now Nathan Nunn claims that the slave trade may also have had a long-term impact on economies. The author
…find[s] a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves exported from a country and current economic performance. To better understand [...]
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