Stumbling and Mumbling discusses the seemingly strange fact that public opinion is so heavily against the legalisation of drugs that pose a lower social cost than some already legal drugs. Now the legalisation of drugs is an issue we have discussed at length here ( ). Now if society is fully informed of the costs […]
When discussing the latest OCR decision Bernard Hickey at the Rates Blog suggested that Dr Bollard should lift the cash rate in order to help “rebalance” the economy. I have heard this suggestion from many, many, other economists as well – suggesting that this view is fairly mainstream. Furthermore, Dr Bollard does keep mentioning the […]
The RBNZ just told us that the OCR is unchanged. No surprises. The focus was on what would happen to this statement from September: We expect such support will be needed for some time. As a result, we continue to expect to keep the OCR at or below the current level through until the latter […]
That appears to be the suggestion of David Grimmond from Infometrics according to this article (also found here). How do I feel about this suggestion, well I agree. Legalise it, that way we can apply standard quality controls, pump out education and information, and place externality taxes on it. Worst case scenario: The externality tax […]
With the mass of recent discussion on the exchange rate and the “structure” of the economy (here, here, here, and here) it seems like a good time to discuss exactly how the exchange rate matters insofar as discussing the economy. Luckily for us, Paul Krugman has already done an excellent job of this.
The Rates Blog has reported that John Key has stated that he believes the RBNZ will leave the official cash rate unchanged until at least mid-2010, because of the high dollar. Now, I prefer it when politicians completely stay away from monetary policy. However, instead of banging on about that again lets look at why […]