Archive for April 2008
Financial transaction taxes and New Zealand
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 29, 2008
Given my uncertainty about who to vote for the the next New Zealand general election I’ve been exploring registered political parties wikipedia pages. While looking I noticed that a number of smaller parties tended to favour a financial transactions tax (Progressives, Alliance, Democrats, and Direct Democracy). Looking at the parties websites, the only [...]
From “Strategic Assets” to “Sensitive Land”: The Circus Continues
Posted by: agnitio on: April 29, 2008
As may have noticed I find the whole “strategic asset” thing a little ridiculous. If I thought the situation was stupid before, you can imagine how I felt when I read Dr Cullen saying that the law actually states that it must be a “strategic asset” on “sensitive land”. Where sensitive land is “defined [...]
Household structure, economic units, and income splitting
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 28, 2008
There is talk in the air that the New Zealand government may one day look at “income splitting” as a form of providing tax relief.
Income splitting changes the fundamental economic unit that is taxed from the individual to the household. The most likely form of income splitting we could see in New Zealand would [...]
Treading on our human rights!
Posted by: metrosideros on: April 24, 2008
Being urged to blog, I shall respond with a counter-knee-jerk against kneejerking by others. http://www.stuff.co.nz/4492587a11.html is a link to a great DomPost article, one of the most recent in a series that reports on the rising outrage amongst the New Zealand population as petrol prices rise. Does anyone else get the impression that [...]
April 08 OCR review
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 24, 2008
In a widely expected move, the RBNZ left the official cash rate unchanged in April. As a result, primary interest turned to the statement.
In the statement the RBNZ admitted that economic activity has weakened more markedly than they expected in March. However, they placed the labour market, government spending, and commodity prices that [...]
More smoking in public
Posted by: rauparaha on: April 23, 2008
I’ve talked a lot before about hyperbolic discounting, time inconsistency and smoking. Reading a paper by Gruber and Koszegi on the topic yesterday, I came across an interesting little aside.
They point out that, for an addict, smoking in different periods is complementary. That means that taxes to overcome time inconsistency problems are substitutes: if [...]
OCR review preview: April 2008
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 23, 2008
Tomorrow will see the Reserve Bank make a decision on whether to change the official cash rate from its current level of 8.25%.
Although some commentators believe that the slowing pace of domestic economic activity merits a rate cut, most economists agree that leaving rates unchanged at the moment would be prudent. Here’s why:
(Re)nationalise the grid? Protecting our “Strategic” Assets
Posted by: agnitio on: April 21, 2008
You probably all remember the shady tax deal that Transpower did a while ago whereby they sold the South Island Grid to a US bank who kindly leased it back to Transpower for 100 years.
Well it appears that the credit crunch is hitting Wachovia (said US bank) pretty hard which has called into question the [...]
Save the people or save the world
Posted by: rauparaha on: April 20, 2008
An excellent, and often forgotten, point in favour of limiting our response to climate change is the opportunity cost of reducing carbon emissions. Opponents of a policy response often point to the monetary cost to the developed world. Proponents reply that you can’t put a monetary cost on saving the planet. As economists we should [...]
Outsourcing jobs – whats the issue?
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 18, 2008
Yesterday we had the dual announcements of both Fisher and Paykel and ANZ moving work overseas.
The Standard has taken issue with this activity. Particularly, two posts at the Standard lamented the “exploitation” of foreign workers and stated that consumers should stand up to protect domestic jobs.
On a separate note we have seen the closure [...]
Climate change and the decision to delay
Posted by: rauparaha on: April 17, 2008
I went to a debate about climate change a few days ago and, uncharacteristically, decided to take notes of my thoughts throughout the talk. In order that they not be wasted I’ve decided to do a series of posts on some of the interesting points that came up in the course of the seminar. Today’s [...]
Biofuels and food prices
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 17, 2008
Why is everyone acting so surprised about the fact that biofuel regulation will (and has) led to higher food prices? We said it would in August (well to be fair, Keith Woodford from Lincoln University said it before us, and other people were saying it before that ).
However, unlike some commentators, we [...]
Bringing people into the country is strategic but having electricity isn’t??
Posted by: agnitio on: April 17, 2008
So we have been talking about asset sales (or the blocking of) in relation to Auckland airport a fair amount lately. As you may or may not have picked up I don’t really have a problem with the idea as the assets in question were already owned by investors and nothing bad had happened. We [...]
Unwanted pregnancy and default options
Posted by: rauparaha on: April 16, 2008
It is well known that the default option for a choice hugely influences the outcome of peoples’ decisions. Governments exploit this regularly by, for instance, using opt-out rather than opt-in schemes for pension plans. The idea here is to encourage people to choose the ‘right’ thing without actually constraining their decisions making in any way. [...]
Why does the target rate matter?
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: April 16, 2008
WIth inflation heading far outside the Reserve Bank’s target band both Kiwiblog and Kiwiblogblog have had a little to say about inflation targeting.
David Farrar at Kiwiblog states that inflation outside the range is bad, and in fact our relevant target band should be 0-2%. He also states that we can act like the target [...]
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