jamesz

Save the people or save the world

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An excellent, and often forgotten, point in favour of limiting our response to climate change is the opportunity cost of reducing carbon emissions. Opponents of a policy response often point to the monetary cost to the developed world. Proponents reply that you can’t put a monetary cost on saving the planet. As economists we should always try to think about things in real rather than nominal terms, so what is the real opportunity cost of climate change policy? It could be investment in the developing world, reducing the number of people living in poverty or controlling the African AIDS epidemic.

Are the costs of limited climate change enough to persuade you to sacrifice the lives of so many who will die if the funds that could be used to save them are spent combating global warming? Read more

Matt Nolan

Outsourcing jobs – whats the issue?

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Yesterday we had the dual announcements of both Fisher and Paykel and ANZ moving work overseas.

The Standard has taken issue with this activity. Particularly, two posts at the Standard lamented the “exploitation” of foreign workers and stated that consumers should stand up to protect domestic jobs.

On a separate note we have seen the closure of a Dunedin knitwear company at the same time, while the D&B payment survey shows that manufacturers are taking a long time to pay their bills, taking 53.6 days on average (can only find old one 😛 ):

What do these stories have in common other than the sad fact of job losses? What do these stories tell us about the New Zealand economy?

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jamesz

Climate change and the decision to delay

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I went to a debate about climate change a few days ago and, uncharacteristically, decided to take notes of my thoughts throughout the talk. In order that they not be wasted I’ve decided to do a series of posts on some of the interesting points that came up in the course of the seminar. Today’s topic is whether it would be less costly to delay doing something about climate change. Read more

Matt Nolan

Biofuels and food prices

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Why is everyone acting so surprised about the fact that biofuel regulation will (and has) led to higher food prices? We said it would in August (well to be fair, Keith Woodford from Lincoln University said it before us, and other people were saying it before that 😉 ).

However, unlike some commentators, we do not believe that the fact that world food prices are rising should impact our decision on whether to make biofuels mandatory (something I don’t agree with), as NZ’s demand for biofuels will be so small that it won’t have an impact on the world price for food.

Also there are some unintended benefits for NZ from the mandatory regulations in the US and Europe. Corn etc has become more expensive, making it more costly for foreign dairy farmers to produce milk. This is part of the reason that milk spot prices have doubled over the last year – injecting a lot of money into the NZ economy.

On that note, I want to complain about this: (h.t. Kiwiblog)

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Will Taylor

Bringing people into the country is strategic but having electricity isn’t??

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So we have been talking about asset sales (or the blocking of) in relation to Auckland airport a fair amount lately. As you may or may not have picked up I don’t really have a problem with the idea as the assets in question were already owned by investors and nothing bad had happened. We are talking about two profit maximizing investors exchanging ownership of an asset; they have the same incentives to make money regardless of whether they live here or overseas. We aren’t talking about privatization where the government is selling something to private investors where the incentives between the two parties could arguably be quite different (profit maximization vs. welfare maximization) although they often coincide. That however is a different issue.

I was a bit astounded to read this morning that aparantly the government is unlikely to block the sale of part of our electricity distribution network but not an airport. Not because I have a problem with the sale (I’m perfectly comfortable with it) , more that I think if you apply the same incorrect logic that blocked the AIAL sale, you should be more worried about electricity lines.

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jamesz

Unwanted pregnancy and default options

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It is well known that the default option for a choice hugely influences the outcome of peoples’ decisions. Governments exploit this regularly by, for instance, using opt-out rather than opt-in schemes for pension plans. The idea here is to encourage people to choose the ‘right’ thing without actually constraining their decisions making in any way. People tend to be comfortable with an arbitrary choice of default option for a new scheme. For existing schemes, a decision to change the default option from the status quo might meet with considerable opposition. However, using the power of the default option to influence peoples’ choices could potentially have a huge impact on problems that our society currently faces. Read more