Brian Rudman in the Herald, discusses the cost-benefit analyses of major infrastructure investment that are required by Treasury guidelines: I’ve come to the conclusion that the main beneficiaries of the big events politicians subsidise at our expense are the cost-benefit analysts hired to justify the expenditure in the first place. … The cynical take on […]
While browsing Andrew Gelman’s recent posts I also came across this gem, which reinforces my priors in every possible way. So of course I loved it! He writes: More and more I feel like economic reporting is based on crude principles of adding up “good news” and “bad news.” Sometimes this makes sense: by almost […]
Chris Dillow, via Eric: …even intelligent and numerate people are quick to misperceive randomness and to pay for an expertise that doesn’t exist; the subjects included students of sciences, engineering and accounting. Which reminded me of Andrew Gelman’s recent post about results in headline academic journals such as Science and Nature. He quotes Sanjay Srivastava […]
From Rogeberg on rational addiction: Theories of rational addiction make assumptions concerning the choice rule, preferences and beliefs of people, and derive the resulting consumption plans. … Some economists claim support from the famous as-if methodology of Friedman 1953 … which explicitly identifies prediction as the only aim of “positive economics.”…[Such] explanations may prove excellent […]
A paper out of Otago university finds: Every time Parliament passes a new act it costs the country an average of $3.5 million, according to a new study. And… even just a piece of regulation costs around $530,000… Researchers in Wellington and Otago came up with the figure by analysing the number of acts and […]
From the philosopher Jon Elster in a trenchant critique of Gary Becker’s approach to everything: If Gary Becker didn’t exist, we would have to invent someone like him. For close to four decades he has been taking economic theory beyond its usual domain of applications, almost single-handedly creating the economics of discrimination, human capital theory, […]