Ok, so I am a geek. That should come as no surprise to anyone. One of my favourite book series is Discworld by by Terry Pratchett.
The latest book, Raising Steam, has a nice description of creative destruction: Read more
In a recent email conversation with some other economists we realised that sometimes people get upset when we talk about people following incentives – as it makes them sound harmless. Within the conversation I discussed how this was due to the different ways economists and non-economists interpret the word. My email went as follows:
It could be that people confuse “following incentives” as “making a conscious choice to hurt others”. There are three key differences:
- The incentive we are discussing is at the margin and conditional – the other “good” factors matter, but holding those constant the incentive has an impact at the margin
- Not all decisions to follow incentives “hurt others” – in fact the vast majority don’t
- And adding to those two is the way we use beliefs and how our unconscious mind functions – often it changes our subjective perspective of and beliefs around things to make doing actions in your personal interest seem more palatable for your conscious mind. This made sense in an evolutionary sense, as people that were able to ensure the survival of their genes in “good conscious” were more likely to actually survive. Of course it gets more complicated than that – but it seems consistent with observation and evolutionary game theory.
Of course, stating this would just make peps look at us funny. Maybe I should put it up as a blog post?
Team NZ sadly didn’t win the America’s Cup. It would have been a good party in Auckland if we had. Just like the RWC was.
With more than a little hubris, there were numerous media stories on the economic benefits of winning and hosting the America’s cup. Now it appears it was too early.
In response to one estimate that the benefit would be $500m, I was quoted as colourfully describing that:
[The economic benefits of hosting the event would be based on] over-hyped studies that are proven to be absolute b…….. after the fact.
For the record, following is what I sent to each media query on the economic benefits of the America’s Cup. Read more
Here at TVHE our two favorite things are beer and economics. Some of our most insightful discussions of economics often occur over a beer or two…I might even go as far as saying the beer consumption of TVHE authors should be subsidised given the large, un-priced public benefits that occur when we drink. But that’s a whole post in and of itself…
The reason for this post is that an NZ Brewery is releasing an economics themed beer! If you read this blog and don’t find that exciting I am confused….The beer is called Hopportunity Cost IPA (as brewer/economist myself, I’m gutted I didn’t think of the name first!!) and the brewery is Behemoth Brewing Company. Behemoth is the brand of lawyer-turned-brewer Andrew Childs, who is “famous” for a winning “Wellington in a Pint” with coffee flavoured beer named after the mayor of Wellington, the Celia Wade-Brown Ale (dom post write up here). I’ve had a sneak peak of the beer and it is delicious!
The launch parties in Auckland/Wellington/ChCh are coming up soon, so you should get along and support economics themed beers! Plus it will widen the pool of people who get the economics puns on the posters that will be at the venues:)
And last but not least, the amazing economics themed tap badge/logo:
Deirdre McCloskey has many admirable attributes. Ranking high among them is the clarity of her prose. It is instantly recognisable for its lucidity, wordiness, eloquence, and disdain. For those of us who might wish our writing to be more like hers in some respects she has written a guide. It recommends itself as advice for writing in
…a better way, which someone whose brain has not been addled by incessant reading of economics can make something of.
I’m confident that is something we can all support. Read more
The Commerce Commission recently updated it Mergers & Acquisitions guidelines for the first time in 10 years (read them here). They also updated the Authorisation guidelines, which is the mechanism available to the Commission to approve mergers that lesson competition but have an offsetting public benefit (available here).
In Auckland on 10 September (just under two weeks away) the Law and Economics Association of New Zealand (LEANZ) is putting on a special event with the ComCom’s top competition economist (Lilla Csorgo) and top competition lawyer (David Blacktop) talking about the new guidelines.
Details from the mailout below: Read more