Archive for August 2008
Compensation and the ETS
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 29, 2008
Although the blogs appear to be quite quiet about it, I’ve heard a number of people complaining about the government compensating people for the impact of the emissions trading scheme.
Effectively, people who are unhappy about it are telling me that such compensation appears to be pointless as it “cancels out the effect” of pricing carbon [...]
August 08 NBNZ Business outlook
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 28, 2008
July discussion here.
I don’t usually talk about the Business outlook stats – but I did last month, and I should this month (*).
Own activity expectations moved back into positive territory, business confidence is at its highest rate since November, and inflation expectations are at record levels (3.79% – even higher than the expectation numbers reported [...]
Good question!
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 28, 2008
Over at Econlog Bryan Caplan asks a good question – he asks why economists who often rail against the free market will also often state that they strongly support civil liberties. Fundamentally he is asking, why do these people not support freedom to trade but do support freedom of expression.
Now I agree with Dr [...]
Did the July FPI tell us food price growth was starting to cool?
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 27, 2008
According to this Herald article the fact that annual food price growth fell from 8.2% to 7.6%, and the fact that increases stemmed from a lift in fresh vege prices implies that food price inflation is now cooling. Lets investigate this claim a little bit. (Note: I am ignoring the title “Relief on [...]
The savings “delusion” and capital gains
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 27, 2008
Over at the Paul Krugman blog Dr Krugman criticises “conservatives” for treating capital gains as savings. This criticism followed an article by Tyler Cowan stating that people have treated capital gains as savings (article is found here).
Now pinch me if I’m wrong, but I can’t see the issue with
People assuming that other people treat capital [...]
Happiness, policies, and economics
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 26, 2008
It is good to see the Frog Blog discussing happiness and policy – as fundamentally the goal of policy should be to promote the highest social happiness, not necessarily to promote the largest GDP number.
The article that Frog links to can be found here, and on Saturday there was an article in the paper by [...]
Technology and resources: The value judgments
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 26, 2008
Technology and the limited nature of non-renewable resources is an important issue in economics, the social sciences, and general policy making. It is an issue where each side of the political spectrum feels that the other side is stupid.
In an article we have linked to here, there are people that feel economists ignore the [...]
Think Big and the balance of payments
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 25, 2008
When I was listening to Radio NZ on Sunday I heard some people discussing why they thought “Think Big” was a good idea.
Although I agree with some of the points they raised, if those points are actually true (namely that they felt, given forecasts at the time, these projects would have been viable – and [...]
Posting trouble
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 25, 2008
Hi all, For some reason I can’t post anything particularly long at the moment – as the site doesn’t like me.
As a result, none of the ideas I have for posts can be satisfactorily placed on the site. I can still comment though – its just taking a while.
If you want you can [...]
No turning point in housing
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 22, 2008
It is interesting to see the real estate blog calling a “turning point” in the housing market. For the sake of completeness, I’m going to attempt to call the opposite – namely I am going to put down the case for why the housing market will continue to remain slow.
Note that I am stating [...]
Is economics not transparent enough?
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 22, 2008
Is economics not transparent enough?
I ask this question after reading this awesome post from the Freakonomics post (ht Antidismal) (Disclaimer: It is really only awesome if you are into economics ). Specifically, these two points that are often raised in presentations:
23. The motivation of the agents in this theory is so [...]
Boobs on bikes and violent male crime
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 21, 2008
Source: Stuff
There has been a lot of discussion surround the recent Boobs on Bikes parade in Auckland. Specifically, there is a belief that pornography, which is promoted by this parade, causes violent male crime.
This is a bold claim – a claim I know practically nothing about. However, I’m going to try and describe [...]
The debt binge – who to “blame”?
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 20, 2008
Has anyone else noticed the large swath of BNZ articles turning up around the internet, both on the Rates Blog and on Business Day (they also do more writing on their homepage). It is good – I like seeing economists getting out there and writing things.
Anyway, while I was looking through all these articles [...]
Wine and competition in New Zealand
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 20, 2008
In the following story on Stuff, we are told that a New Zealand wine maker has sold a whole bunch of wine for $3.50 a litre – an incredibly low price for the premium brand.
The reason for these “firesales” of wine we are told is:
these big sales come on the back of a bumper harvest [...]
Has the dip in petrol prices taken care of inflation?
Posted by: Matt Nolan on: August 19, 2008
I was a bit confused when I heard a claim from Roger J Kerr that September quarter consumer price growth was only going to come in at 0.4%, leaving annual growth in the CPI at around 4%.
His justification for the weakening outlook for growth in the CPI was a softening in petrol prices – something [...]
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