Matt Nolan
Financial regulation: Efficiency vs stability trade-off - The Dismal Science
Dec 04, 2012 •
Over at Rates Blog the trilogy of articles I’ve put up about the GFC has been completed with this one. The first two artices are here and here, and the blog post I did on them are here and here. Infometrics will be popping up some more articles on Tuesday’s, but they won’t be on [...]
Working towards a “why” of changes in manufacturing - The Dismal Science
Nov 29, 2012 •
There has been a long-running debate in New Zealand and around the world about the “hollowing out” of manufacturing – ultimately this is a subset of the wider concern about tradable vs non-tradable economic activity in NZ. Also as we have said, it may be possible that what we are seeing is scarcity easing in [...]
A different view of an inflation/price level target: No-monetization commitment - The Dismal Science
Nov 28, 2012 •
In New Zealand a strange thing is happening. While other countries are looking at making their inflation targets more explicit following the crisis, and many more countries are debating whether to use a level or growth target (eg the NGDP target is essentially a price level target with some flexibility – while flexible inflation targeting [...]
More on describing the crisis - The Dismal Science
Nov 27, 2012 •
Rates blog posted another article by me, this time talking about why the GFC persisted. So in the first one I laid down Fed actions as the catalyst, and in the second one I’ve primarily laid the blame on institutional confusion in Europe. I’m not sure anyone will find this article, by itself, particularly enlightening. [...]
Where the moral hazard comes from - The Dismal Science
Nov 26, 2012 •
I have a sneaking suspicion that the term moral hazard is getting a bit abused at the moment. Let’s use the Wikipedia definition: A moral hazard is a situation where a party will have a tendency to take risks because the costs that could incur will not be felt by the party taking the risk [...]
The case for not cutting - The Dismal Science
Nov 22, 2012 •
There is a growing call for rate cuts to the OCR in New Zealand given the high unemployment rate, indications that the September quarter was very weak, and the fact people are pissed off that the weakness in the New Zealand economy has been so persistent! Now I’m not going to go one way or [...]
Cliff notes on the financial crisis - The Dismal Science
Nov 20, 2012 •
At work we are writing occasional articles for the fine people over at Rates Blog at the moment. I’ve decided to focus on an issue that will get people irritated – an explanation of the GFC where I largely defend economists (although admiting that the mainstream missed the development of the shadow banking sector). I’ve [...]
Careful with the CGT “silver bullet” - The Dismal Science
Nov 15, 2012 •
In New Zealand people are looking for a lot of ways to solve many perceived problems with a quick policy solution. One that is being suggested is a capital gains tax. The feeling is that we are facing several issues: We aren’t saving enough We have too few houses We are spending too much on [...]
A hole in construction employment … really? - The Dismal Science
Nov 12, 2012 •
A big deal was made during the release of the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) of the decline in construction employment. According to the HLFS, employees in the construction industry (including the self-employed) fell 4.0% from a year earlier in the September quarter – even as New Zealand’s second biggest city was supposed to be [...]
Institutional status report - The Dismal Science
Nov 09, 2012 •
The jump in unemployment, and the fact that the labour market has been weak for a long time, is leading to understandable angst. The government has been blamed as you often expect, the world has been blamed as it should, and the RBNZ is increasingly being blamed. I would like to cover off a few [...]