Author Archive
Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 10, 2008
Ed Prescott has written some pretty brainy stuff in his time. I’m particularly a fan of his work on dynamic inconsistency in economics with Finn Kydland. But, here we see why you should not make heroes of people.
Sharing the school uniform surplus
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 9, 2008
The Commerce Commission appears to have found an unusual source of anti-competitive behaviour: schools forcing parents to use a monopoly supplier of school uniforms. Apparently schools often accept payments from clothing manufacturers in exchange for exclusive rights to sell the school’s uniform. Then the manufacturers extract large rents from their monopoly position by charging high [...]
A world without growth?
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 5, 2008
My favourite article of NewScientist’s series is Herman Daly’s. The father of modern ecological economics lashes out at the way economists ignore the source of inputs to production and the capacity of the waste sinks that we have. As he puts it, we should imagine the economy as a system within the world’s ecosystem.
I don’t understand air fares
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 5, 2008
I’ve been looking at air fares for overseas travel recently and somethign stood out. When you stop over in a city it costs a whole lot more to stop over for a few days than it does to just transfer flights and pass through. I would have thought that getting to your final destination faster [...]
Does sustainability make us happier?
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 4, 2008
So we are going to have to cut our consumption and it’s not going to make us better off. How come NewScientist’s authors seem to agree that we won’t necessarily be unhappier? Where evidence is given it tends to be in terms of happiness measures. Kate Soper (London Metropolitan University) points out that wealth doesn’t [...]
Will sustainability make us better off?
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 3, 2008
An important question raised by the writers in NewScientist’s feature is whether we will be less happy living sustainably. This is the part of the series I felt was weakest. The general consensus amongst them is that we will actually be happier if we live sustainably because we will live healthier lifestyles. David Suzuki claims [...]
Poverty and violence in Africa
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 3, 2008
A recent article on VoxEU discusses the link between poverty and violence in Africa. It’s a tricky topic because there are good arguments to be made for causation in both directions and the direction of causation matters hugely for aid policy.
National chooses not to rule ‘by decree’
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 2, 2008
It looks like National has decided not to continue with the previous government’s plans to introduce a standard for lightbulb efficiency. They say We want to encourage people to [switch], we think there may be benefits for them to do it, but it should be a choice they make as consumers. It’s a good point: [...]
Is our economy killing the planet?
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 2, 2008
I’ve recently been browsing old magazines and my attention was grabbed by a feature in the October 18 edition of NewScientist. In it they collate a series of articles under the heading ‘Why the economy is killing the planet and what we can do about it’. At first I was disappointed that a publication puporting [...]
James Bond: anti-trust crusader!?
Posted by: rauparaha on: December 1, 2008
- In: Antitrust | Other
- 2 Comments
I saw the new Bond flick, ‘Quantum of Solace’, over the weekend and I was amazed at how progressive it is. No longer does our alpha-male hero wreak destruction upon villains with moon bases, bent on world domination. His latest homicidal rampage is to prevent a new terror: oligopoly pricing.
Aborting crime
Posted by: rauparaha on: November 28, 2008
- In: Politics
- 10 Comments
Garth George at The Herald reckons that the root cause of all abuse and domestic violence is abortion. His position seems largely religious in nature so I can’t argue the point on his grounds. However, I was surprised to see reasonable-sounding commentators at Kiwiblog unsure whether George might be correct. This topic isn’t a new [...]
Happy, happy people!
Posted by: rauparaha on: November 20, 2008
- In: Environmental | Other
- 1 Comment
Yay, we’re the 15th happiest country in the world! Unsurprisingly, while money makes us happy, it doesn’t really matter once you earn over 15,000 USD/capita. What really matters is trust, tolerance and religion, apparently. Being religious makes you seven percentage points happier on average, which probably explains Saudi Arabia’s unusual happiness in the face of [...]
Parochial Wellington posting
Posted by: rauparaha on: November 13, 2008
- In: Other | Poll
- 14 Comments
TVHE is a bunch of current and former Wellingtonians so, via The Wellingtonista, here is a map of how we voted down here. Tom at The Wellingtonista has done an amazing job with the data so click the map to see a detailed breakdown by polling booth.
Make friends, not dams
Posted by: rauparaha on: November 12, 2008
Federated Farmers’ press release: …if government increase[s] infrastructure expenditure it should spend money on building dams rather than cycle lanes. …Water storage is critical to New Zealand’s future. It is well known that farming is the backbone of the economy. Current run of river water allocation systems see farmers too vulnerable to drought and floods. [...]
Space: the next to go
Posted by: rauparaha on: November 11, 2008
Looks like we narrowly missed by crunched by space debris the other night. Although, in true “tragedy of the commons” style “[a]stronauts routinely trash equipment in space.” So, as the world starts to think about trying to fix the mess we made of the ozone layer, we’re already on our way to trashing another part [...]
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