Entries by jamesz

Invalid opinions

IF you follow the econ blogs in New Zealand you’ll have seen Matt and others getting pretty grumpy about the uninformed comments sometimes made in the media. That has only been exacerbated by the recent misunderstanding of quantitative easing. A philosopher writing in the Herald sums up how I think economists feel: If “everyone’s entitled […]

Trespassing sexual offenders

The Whanganui council’s reaction to Stuart Wilson’s release has been striking: Whanganui’s public “shunning” of Wilson will be coordinated by councillors Jack Bullock and Ray Stevens. … Mayor Annette Main said the decisions made by the council [to ban Wilson from public areas] would help keep the community safe from sex offenders such as Wilson. […]

Why don’t we work fewer hours?

Posner hilariously skewers Skidelsky: They have collaborated on a book arguing that people in wealthy countries like Britain and the United States work too hard and by doing so miss out on the “good life” — an ethical concept of a life as “worthy of desire, not just one that is widely desired.” … If […]

Unintended consequences

I once read a great quote that I can no longer find. The gist was that there is no such thing as an unintended consequence, only a consequence you failed to understand. Economists, with a methodology centred on individual actions in response to incentives, are pretty good at picking the consequences of policies. That’s sometimes […]

Models vs knowledge

The Age reports on Australian legislation that forced banks to make ATM transaction fees explicit to the customer: In place of the indirect fees were direct fees in which the owner of each foreign ATM took the money directly from our accounts each time we made a foreign withdrawal. But the size of the charge, […]