Over at the Standard, Steve Pierson points out a TV1 poll that shows that the majority of New Zealander’s are happy with the decision to buy back the railroad at a cost of over $1bn. That is cool, if society is happy with doing something and has full knowledge of the costs and benefits, then […]
Note: Other posts in this discussion are available under the tag “inflation debate“. After placing down all the trade-offs between inflation and output, it was not clear that fighting inflation was necessarily the best cause of action. Although there are definitely costs from inflation, there are also costs from fighting it. Ultimately, it would be […]
Just been looking at the blog of the iPredict internet venture (site here, blog here). It looks like interesting stuff, and is definitely a good way of illustrating the “wisdom of crowds”. One thing that did excite me was a “recession contract” (blog post here, contract details here). If it turns out that we have […]
Over at Anti-dismal, Paul Walker notices an article by Andrea M. Dean and Russell S. Sobel which show that the regions with a Wal-Mart tend to have a higher number of small enterprises (with 5-9 employees) than regions without a Wal-Mart. The same trend holds (albeit more weakly) for businesses with 1-4 employees, and the […]
Over at No Right Turn, Idiot/Savant appears to view the idea of using markets to fight climate change as a touch silly. This view is captured in the following quote (here): What’s important is that we reduce emissions now, not whether our chosen policy is perfect and cleaves to neo-liberal orthodoxy. Now I think this […]
So on Thursday the Reserve Bank decides whether to cut interest rates or not. Last I heard the market is pricing in a 56% chance of a cut, while economists are picking a 45% chance (I’m surprised its not 50% 😛 ). Now I think it is clear from the writing on this blog that […]