One of the main justifications for redistribution policies is “diminishing marginal utility”. We have already discussed that this doesn’t really make sense as we can’t compare peoples “utility”. For example, people that receive higher utility from consumption will work more and thereby will earn a higher income – from here we cannot tell whether the […]
Not PC has a very interesting post on identifying recessions. Using a special measure of the money supply as a leading indicator he shows that a large fall in this measure usually implies a recession (*). This makes sense as a recession is a time when money demand falls rapidly. As the stock of money […]
Other people have more to say about today’s inflation result than I do (Interest blog) (the Standard) (Tumeke). Really, today’s result was pretty much what everyone was expecting – except for a stronger than expected increase in food prices (thanks to a mix of meat and fruit and veges). However, this slight uptick does make […]
One of the most vexing questions in economics has to be why the price of a 330ml coke is often only slightly less than the price of a 1.5l coke. This issue generalises to other products such as chippies. Now there are a number of good responses, namely: Strongly diminishing marginal utility for fresh coke […]
Note: Other posts in this discussion are available under the tag “inflation debate“. So, after calling on you guys to give me some indication of your views on monetary policy we discussed what inflation is, and then we moved on to discussing the costs that stem from inflation. We are now ready to discuss the […]
Over at the Standard they are discussing the perceived inequity associated with a shift from a progressive income tax system to a flat income tax system. This is an issue we have discussed before in this post. In the post we asked “what is the equality-efficiency trade-off” and “is the tax system the best way […]