This article made my day. I am also picking Spain to win the world cup, but I am heavily biased since my mother is Spanish. It is good to know that my profression has my back on this one though:)
So if the economists are right on this one we should expect to see Torres pulling this pose a few times on his way to winning the Golden Boot:)
In an email exchange with fellow economists from around the place I made the following wild conjectures on why fiscal stimulus could be seen as a good idea – but isn’t necessarily first best. Feel free to read and critique 😉
Ok, first off, I’m sorry I haven’t done a post-budget thing for a Green’s alternative budget yet – it will come, I’ve just been really really busy.
Second, this talk on the ETS is irritating me. And it isn’t because of the description of what it will do to prices – this is true, the price of stuff that uses carbon will go up when you put a price on carbon. The problem is the “frame” its being put into, which ignores trade-offs. Here is the frame:
What is it?: A market-based approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions units, or carbon credits, are traded between participants.
People see this and then they say “global warming isn’t real” or “we are too small to impact on global warming” and then they say “NO ETS!”. However, this isn’t the point of the ETS.
The ETS is a scheme to raise the funds to pay for our Kyoto Liability. Even if you don’t believe in global warming, we have a liability that is based on carbon emissions. As a nation, either people who produce the carbon pay for it – or everyone pays for it through higher taxes.
So here in lies the question – do we want higher prices for carbon goods or lower incomes because of higher taxes? Given that the liability is a function of the amount of carbon we produce, it follows that pricing carbon on the basis of this will lead to the “best” solution – no matter what political party you support. I know that National, Labour, and the Greens all understand this – so if you guys could like, explain it to the ACT party, and then like, explain it to the public, I’ll be very happy 😀
Update: Fuller points discussing the arguments around this in more detail in this comment. Amazed at the strength of feeling around the ETS when all the impact studies suggest that the costs aren’t nearly as substantial as many other policies that are out and about …
It seems I’ve done over 1000 posts in about 34 months.
I must have written a lot of crap – my apologises to everyone that get forced into reading it 😉
I would pick a favourite post, but I can’t remember what I’ve written about. I view the blog as a tool for two things you see:
Anyway – thanks for catching me out on the many occasions when I’ve said dumb stuff 😀
Update: Actually, my favourite posts were the Sweeney Todd ones (first and second) – I decided this after talking to my boss about movies. However, I have now realised I don’t know what my favourite movie is :/
Primum non nocere, first do no harm. This is a good pledge for a medical professional, and would be a great pledge for a policy analyst, but it doesn’t make much sense as a pledge from an economist – as we don’t actually make decisions, we frame situations and describe trade-offs.
However, this does not mean that economists do not have some sort of moral obligation associated with their analysis. In order to cover this off Robin Hanson discusses the “efficiency economist pledge” (ht Robbie A). :
I pledge to be an efficient economist, who helps clients find win-win deals to resolve social conflicts.
Reading the full pledge, it seems that the goal is to use economic advice to provide the client with the knowledge and tools they need to get what they are after.
This is as opposed to a moral principle I have heard discussed by Eric Crampton which pertains specifically to doing work for government. Namely that when there is a difference between the social optimality of a policy and the policy that suit policy wonks, it is not right to provide advice that specifically benefits your client at a cost to broader society. [Do I have this right Eric?] Update: Eric lays out his view more fully here.
If I have described Eric’s additional moral requirement appropriately, then my main counter to this has always been “it isn’t the economists fault that they are taking the incentives involved, it is just an illustration of government failure”. The illustration should be made more apparent IMO, but I do not blame analysts for acting in their self interest.
Tonight at 9.30pm (NZ time) the All Whites will take on Australia over in Melbourne. The squad is named here (expected Aussie squad here).
Everyone at TVHE is very excited that the All Whites have qualified for the World Cup, and also pumped for the match against the Aussies tonight. So pumped that Nolan put down $5 on NZ to win (at 10:1).
So good luck boys, we are looking forward to watching you get amongst.
Update: Feel free to go into comments and discuss your fantasy squad for today 😉 . Also Yellow Fever discussion is here (pg 21 is where we get more into game day).
Update: All Whites lost 2-1. Up 1-0 at half-time. Great performance boys. And seriously, our first team looks pretty good – its going to be a great World Cup 🙂