It is well known that beautiful people earn more, which goes some way to explaining Matt Nolan’s success in his stage career. What is apparently more difficult to understand is why they earn more. A paper tries to split out two effects: productivity and discrimination. For instance, …lecturers who are viewed as better looking receive […]
There was an interesting comment from Andrew Coleman on a recent post of ours in which he laid out the reasons he sees for government intervention in saving behaviour. As I read it he put forward four reasons: People are time inconsistent People are poor at choosing good investment options People underinsure against catastrophe People […]
We’ve had the reports back from a few expert working groups now and what was pointed out to me about the tax report, compared to the savings report, is that it had entirely different tax policy recommendations. The Tax Working Group was at pains to align our taxes such that they did not distort peoples’ […]
The latest article in the Herald on liquor law changes highlights the support of an unusual group: publicans! They are outraged by the unconscionably low prices that supermarkets charge. Low relative to the prices they prefer to charge, that is: I don’t know how supermarket operators can sleep at night. …They are cutting the margins […]
The aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake has seen much of New Zealand pulling together to help out affected residents who are in need. It has also seen a scarcity of many essential items as supermarkets close and water is switched off. In particular, queues at petrol stations have been huge and that has prompted Eric […]
Keith Ng writes today that the real villain in climate change is not businesses, it’s households! He claims that most growth in emissions and energy consumption is due to household consumption, not businesses. Which is the biggest red herring I’ve seen around climate change in a while. Here’s a picture that will help: it shows […]