The question of whether the government has been over-spending is not one I can actually answer – as there is no way of telling exactly what sized government New Zealand wants. However, looking at how government spending compares to recent history can give us some idea about what is going on. Lets do this in […]
I hate the “goal” of productivity growth personally. I think any policy goals we have should be based on equity and allocative efficiency, not trying to make arbitrary ratios look pretty. However, I also disagree with Idiot/Savant’s description of productivity and how he feels that a productivity target is anti-worker (h.t. CPW).
I know no-one here will really care, but I’m actually pretty excited that we (the Phoenix) signed Paul Ifill (ht Yellow Fever). He is a player I’ve rated for this level for a couple of years now and had no idea that we were tracking him. Definitely looking forward to the start of the season. […]
I am very confused at the moment. I keep hearing the NZ right talk about “catching up to Australia” and increasing New Zealand’s labour productivity (eg here and here). But doesn’t this presume that the government has the ability to do these things? This confuses me as I thought that the basis of the NZ […]
Often I have heard people bring up “Baumol’s cost disease” as a reason for why labour productivity and wages can be unrelated. Effectively, the argument is that if labour productivity rises in one sector it increases the demand for labour which in turn drives up wages in other sectors, even though productivity in other sectors […]
From here: Macroeconomics failed in this crisis because it has for ages under-rated the importance of the stuff we (might) learn in industrial organization classes Industrial economics is effectively applied microeconomics in the field of the economy (as compared to some of the more social fields that some microeconomists have moved into). I have always […]