Gulnara Nolan

Why is International Womens Day important?

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Yesterday in New Zealand (and today, the 8th of March, around much of the world) it is International Womens Day.

I was brought up in the Soviet Union, and so this is a day that was always seen as very important – in fact it is a national holiday.

International Womens Day was established at a time when women were treated as second class citizens in society – either given legal status as a dependent, or potentially treated as property in marriage.

The original idea behind the day was that women and men should be treated equally by the law and by society, should be afforded the same opportunities as men, which constitutes things such as equal pay.

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Gulnara Nolan

From the Great Depression to the contemporary days: is the reallocation of resources a solution?

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Former Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King is suggesting that “Economics Needs a Post-Crash Revolution” in a seeming admission that current frameworks don’t work in a world of radical uncertainty and necessary reallocation.

Is the former BOE governor and academic icon correct, or is this an unfair critique of the mainstream?  As a summary, I have two issues with his argument:

  1. Reallocation does not have anything to do with “average demand”, which is predominantly a monetary policy issue,
  2. If excessive reallocation is necessary and requires government assistance, where are the “high return” industries that need reallocation to them?

Let me explain.

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Andrew Coleman

Cook, Elcano, and Circumnavigation

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New Zealand is in the process of commemorating, commiserating and/or celebrating James Cook’s first voyage to New Zealand in 1769. New Zealand was merely one stop on his trip, albeit a lengthy one, which proceeded onwards to Australia, Java (where nearly a third of the crew died from dysentery), Cape Town and back to England.  It was the 25th circumnavigation of the world.

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Matt Nolan

Are real wages lower than 40 years ago

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While rolling around the internet I found the following:

Lets have a look shall we.

Interesting!  But something seems a bit off – surely this can’t be true!?  Let us investigate.

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Matt Nolan

10 years after Lehman

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I have been enjoying the live tweeting of the Lehman Brothers failure – with a 10 year delay.

On the day I had this to say.

Then 10 years ago today I tried to provide some predictions.  The terms of trade fell a little more than I expected (to their 2005 levels rather than to their 2007 level), but otherwise they weren’t that bad – credit rationing was predominantly in the construction sector, mortgage rates fell, and in NZ the crisis was nothing like the Great Depression.  But this:

As long as the information transfer between market participants begins to improve again this crisis will be a historical point of interest in a years time – rather than the beginning of the end.

Glad I conditioned it on the idea that there were be a recognition of loss between debtors and creditors – because once that didn’t happen in Europe the crisis just kept on trucking.  With everything calming down by mid-2009 the world was recovering.  Then Greece in May 2010.  Then my goodness just look at this this cluster.  Finally in 2012 there was a recognition of the need for a lender of last resort in Europe.

If you want a retrospective I did one back in 2014 😉

jamesz

Christmas reading: McCloskey on Piketty

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It’s taken me a month to read it but Deirdre McCloskey’s essay on Piketty’s Capital is just as persuasive as you’d expect. Print it and read it with your family over Christmas!

The review doesn’t break any new ground but it is eloquent and engaging. Her central themes are: Read more