My recent post on universal student allowances was relatively provocative (I thought it might be a little more provocative – maybe it would have been if I said all students and all unemployed people should borrow money instead 😛 ). As a result, it is a good time to briefly go through the way I […]
So the Labour government is looking at putting in a universal student allowance. This was obviously coming for a while now. I have no doubt that many people will see this as a political football – with parties just looking at getting through popularist policies that get them votes, but … I agree with it. […]
So in National’s tax package they have dumped the R&D tax credit. Businesses seem disappointed – but this isn’t enough information in of itself to tell me whether getting rid of the credit is socially optimal or not. In order to analyse this we have to think about why an R&D tax credit could be […]
Intrade has launched a US depression contract (ht Institutional economics). This depression is defined as: a cumulative decline in GDP of more than 10.0% over four consecutive quarters Do you think NZ’s very own iPredict would like to make up a similar contract for NZ?
We have Deposit insurance in NZ now. I’m not sure. Even if it is the right thing to have (as Bernard Hickey on the Rates Blog suggests) I still fear that this sort of action leads to a signaling problem. The act of committing to deposit insurance could suggest to people overseas that our banking […]
Lionel Robbins: In the absence of rational grounds for supposing intimate connection, there would be no sufficient reason for supposing that history “would repeat itself”. For if there is one thing which is shown by history, not less than by elementary logic, it is that historical induction unaided by the analytical judgment, is the worst […]