Matt Nolan

NZ Tax cuts are coming: Time for calculators

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Tax cuts are coming tomorrow, there is excitement in the air. First tax cut after a decade of effective tax rate increases (through fiscal drag). And what an interesting time for it, as we go through the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Still don’t forget that there are tax cut calculators available here and here namely:

  • Infometrics: Simply type in your income and get your tax cut
  • Labour: Has disappeared – is now here (ht Agnitio)
  • NZIER: here, calculates the PPP adjusted income difference between Aus and NZ, and allows you to take into account WFF
  • Deloitte Tax Cut Calculator: Compares NZ and Aus tax cuts

Update: The Standard asks a good question “what are you going to do with your tax cut”. Me, I’m not aiming to change my level of consumption and so it will flow into my savings.

How does this fit in with Ricardian equivalence?

Warning, boring description of my optimal consumption allocation follows below the tab

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Matt Nolan

Does the credit crisis indicate the failure of the “free market”

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Matt McCarten was someone I enjoyed listening to when I was a young Alliance supporter many years ago – however, even in the heyday of teenage communist sympathies I would not have agreed with his conclusion that the recent credit crisis is undeniable evidence that voluntary trade does not work.

Now Kiwiblog and Anti-dismal have already gone to task explaining why they don’t believe this is a fair criticism of free trade, and good on them I think they are on the money (David Farrar focuses on why the criticism doesn’t sit well while Paul Walker paints the case for regulation being the cause of the problem – more here). The Hive also mentions dis-satisfaction with his choice of historical comparison. However, even after reading these posts you may still harbour some confusion surrounding the fact that I said voluntary trade instead of free markets.

Ultimately, his criticism of the “invisible hand” draws out something incredibly naive about the point of view that the free market is bad. Supporters of the free market are not so much saying that corporations should be allowed to manipulate information and “defraud” the public as they are saying that voluntary trade among groups is a good thing.

If two people choose to trade, it must be in their benefit and therefore giving people the freedom to trade is an important part of a society – this is what free trade represents.

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Matt Nolan

New Zealand’s second biggest concern from the Sanlu scandal

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Obviously the biggest concern from this scandal should be the loss of life associated with it. However, the next biggest issue from a New Zealand standpoint is the potential loss of income associated with the damage to the “New Zealand brand”.

Now if Fonterra was taking into account the risk and return associated with their investment in Sanlu I would have little sympathy for the business in this case.  However, according to Rod Oram poor governance in Fonterra ensured that the business owners (the farmers) were put into a situation where risk and return were not taken into account appropriately, and as a result the loss of domestic income was the result of poor processes that were entirely avoidable (ht The Hive).

Furthermore there is a negative externality here.

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Matt Nolan

Congratulations to the Phoenix

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Congratulations to the Phoenix for their first win of the regular season (ht Yellow Fever). I should have been there, but I am currently far too swamped with work.

For those that are complaining about the lackluster crowds I have to say – why the hell are the games on Sunday night? Even if the goal is to “attract families” I don’t think Sunday 5pm is a particularly good time. Give us some Friday and Saturday games and you will see a much larger crowd.

P.S. I will reply to all the comments that appeared over the weekend at some point (hopefully tonight) – I’m just a bit too tied up at the moment to answer things cleanly.

P.P.S. Also congratulation to Liverpool for beating Everton, and to Hull City for beating Arsenal 😉

Matt Nolan

Was it the availability of credit that lead to the housing bubble?

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A popular explanation of the booming in house prices according to, well, everyone is that there was lots of “credit washing around” which convinced people that they should go and bid up house prices. An example of this logic is shown in this statement at the very good Big Picture blog:

The bubble in home prices, fueled by the ready availability of credit, resulted in an underestimate of the risks of residential real estate

Personally, I think this type of thinking has the causality all mixed up – if there was any error it was because people “underestimated the risks” associated with the price of residential real estate, and therefore given the “price” of credit the housing market appeared to be a better bet than it actually was. As a result, the entire blame for the bubble and associated crisis should lie with the fact that risk wasn’t being appropriately identified – not with some mystical belief that credit was springing up all over the place. If the risk problem was unsolvable, then we can blame central banks for leaving the price of credit (not its “availability) to low – however, this is a secondary issue to risk.

The whole concept of the “availability of credit” is somewhat of a misnomer.

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Matt Nolan

2008 crisis in history

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Econbrowser has a great post which takes this post by Brad Delong and adds some historical background.

The post mentions that policy action will aim to prevent the mistakes of 1929, the 1970’s, and Japan in the early 1990s – behind the slight humor this is actually a very important comparison.

One thing I would like to add is that the 1970’s crisis involved a huge negative terms of trade shock for a lot of the developed world (oil prices!) which we have already experienced this time around (I believe there was a smaller TOT shock in the early 90’s) – as a result, policy need to take into account this difference.

It isn’t just that policy was too tight in 1929 and the early 1990’s and too loose in the 1970’s – there are fundamental differences in the shocks being faced. Furthermore the structure of the economy is entirely different (unions are weaker, communications and information dissemination is a lot more rapid, prices appear to be more fluid in a lot of cases). As a result, a historical comparison can only take us so far – although we must not discount histories ability to provide an intensely useful benchmark.