Greg Mankiw isn’t impressed by Obama’s comments on health spending. Obama thinks that increasing health spending without limit is a bad thing. Mankiw points to a QJE article that suggests increasing health spending is optimal: As people get richer and consumption rises, the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly. Spending on health to extend life […]
Dilbert is on the money again. This time on the subject of CEOs working without pay as a show of penance.
Lant Pritchett comes out strongly in favour of aid agencies that promote economic development on Aid Watch: There are many ways of providing assistance to people in poor countries that do little or nothing to produce development. While we might all whole-heartedly agree that de-worming is demonstrated to be cost-effective assistance, its impact on development […]
Deciding how to fund tourism is tricky: On the one hand there are a fairly well-defined group of firms who gain most of the benefits. On the other hand, a large, ill-defined group of firms benefit somewhat from tourism and promotion of New Zealand as a destination is common property. Once you’ve spent money on […]
You’ll have to wait until Matt returns from sick leave to get our perspective on the latest MPS, but I do have a few questions about Alan Bollard’s comments on the banking sector: The banks needed to weigh their responsibility to their shareholders against their responsibility to the New Zealand economy, [Bollard] said. “We think […]
The WHO has now declared the swine flu a global pandemic. There are 27,737 cases confirmed worldwide and the number is growing fast. However, only 141 deaths are confirmed, which gives the swine flu a mortality rate of 0.5%. Compared with the Spanish flu which killed about 10% of those infected it might be seen […]