Causation is just a mirage…
… and when you get a bit closer it’s just spurious correlation. If only economists could do randomised experiments like real scientists.
Deprecated: Function get_page_by_title is deprecated since version 6.2.0! Use WP_Query instead. in /mnt/stor08-wc1-ord1/694335/916773/www.tvhe.co.nz/web/content/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6031
Deprecated: Function get_page_by_title is deprecated since version 6.2.0! Use WP_Query instead. in /mnt/stor08-wc1-ord1/694335/916773/www.tvhe.co.nz/web/content/wp-includes/functions.php on line 6031
Author Archive for: jamesz
Entries by jamesz
Paying off the bad guys
Kevin Drum thinks that a cap-and-trade system for controlling pollution is not worth having if you don’t auction off the permits: There are loads of special interests who hate the idea of a 100% auction, of course. But once you start giving away permits, you’ll never stop. It is, plain and simple, a massive giveaway […]
Homecoming Queen still on top
For all the nerds and geeks who cursed the popular people at high school but comforted themselves with the thought that future success would be theirs… Steven Levitt has bad news: …each extra close friend in high school is associated with earnings that are 2 percent higher later in life after controlling for other factors. […]
In favour of the ‘iwi tax’
Fishermen on the Waikato are apparently going to be subjected to an environmental levy on their earnings by the iwi who own the river. The newspaper article seems a bit negative about the scheme and I can’t see why. To me this is a great idea on a number of levels. I just hope that […]
Do we get what we pay for in healthcare?
I said earlier that we might not always want to trust the people with the best track record when we go off the beaten path. Sometimes the tools that work in one environment aren’t the best to use when the environment changes and what we really need are experts in developing tools. A related post […]
Should we trust the forecasters?
I’ve been flicking back over some posts by Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias and came across this one about judging the reliability of macroeconomists’ advice: It turns out that many macro economists frequently forecast future macro events. Furthermore, many places keep standardized track records of such forecasts, records that can be compared for accuracy; we […]