Matt Nolan

My recent addiction

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Following today’s discussion on an addiction study I have realised that I must have an addition.

For the last 2 months I have been painfully addicted to a horrendous substance – not drinking (except for this one intervention that was staged about 3 weeks ago).

It has had all the negative impacts associated with addiction:

  1. It has visibly negatively impacted on my health – I have had the flu a few times after all,
  2. The longer I haven’t drunk the harder it has been to go out and drink (a sure sign of addiction, and in conjunction with funky discounting this could lead to time inconsistency),
  3. It has caused externalities (namely my complaining to other people).

All I know is that I’m personally concerned about this addiction, and I’ll be doing what I can to solve it tonight.  Even so, can the government really trust an irrational agent like me to drink enough?

Given this I think I need some government intervention.  How about the government subsidises my alcohol and the Law Commission pushes for the regulation of alcohol towards me.

Note:  The only parties I’m making fun of in this post are the government, the Law Commission, and myself (for not drinking for 9 weeks) – not any of the economic analysts.

And don’t try to convince me not drinking isn’t an addiction – I seriously have been struggling to break it!

Matt Nolan

Introducing the Hand

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As you will have noted all four of the current authours (Matt, Rauparaha, Agnitio, and Goonix) have been running at close to full capacity outside of the blog, and so blog material has been lacking for the last three months. Furthermore, we have barely been able to respond to comments.

To help push along blog output we have expanded the effective labour force by introducing “the Hand”. It will cover issues that the rest of us either don’t really care about or don’t feel that we know enough about. However, the authour of the Hand will not remain constant. Effectively, it is a guest blogger.

The Hand differs from previous guest bloggers in that it allows people to post with us without having to think up their own pseudonym. This should reduce the cost associated with producing a piece for us, increasing output at the margin.

The first “the Hand” post will take place at 8am tomorrow on the BERL alcohol report – the one issue I can think of that I’m both sick of hearing about and haven’t read anything about 🙂

Matt Nolan

Football Detour: Phoenix sign Ifill

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I know no-one here will really care, but I’m actually pretty excited that we (the Phoenix) signed Paul Ifill (ht Yellow Fever).  He is a player I’ve rated for this level for a couple of years now and had no idea that we were tracking him.

Definitely looking forward to the start of the season.  BTW, buy a season ticket already.

goonix

C. Ronaldo to Real Madrid for NZ$200million

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Well folks, a new world record transfer deal has just occurred. Real Madrid under a new President, looking to reignite the spirit of the Galacticos, has shelled out over NZ$200 million for Cristiano Ronaldo, world player of the year in 2008. The previous world record transfer fee was incidentally set this week, with Kaka moving to the same side from Inter Milan for NZ$150 million. The record before that also rested with Real, snatching arguably the greatest player the world has ever seen Zinedine Zidane from Juventus for slightly less than NZ$150 million.

What recession?!

Matt Nolan

Economics Carnival

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Curious Cat has an economics carnival on at the moment.  It is a good idea – it is interesting that economics doesn’t seem to have as many carnivals while other disciplines do.

Go check out the posts from all around the economics blogsphere.

Matt Nolan

Bleg: Nepal – what is it like?

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Does anyone know what Nepal is like to visit?  Does anyone have any suggestions about places to visit in Nepal.

Any comments (relevant) welcome.