Paul Walker
More on partial privatisation - The Dismal Science
Oct 29, 2012 •
From Homepaddock comes this interchange from Parliament's questions and answers time for October-24. Michael Woodhouse: Why is it important that the share offer programme goes ahead? Rt Hon JOHN KEY: It is important, firstly, because the Go...
Returning to growth - The Dismal Science
Oct 25, 2012 •
Increasing economic growth is a big issue in most, if not all, countries around the world right now. For the case of the U.K. recovery from severe recessions was achieved in the 1930s and the 1980s in the presence of fiscal consolidation. In this artic...
Trotter, Shearer and the labour market - The Dismal Science
Oct 24, 2012 •
In a recent column in The Press Chris Trotter says that "Immigrants have become an indispensable component of the New Zealand labour market". And how! As I type these words I sit in a room with an American, two Englishmen, two Canadians, a Czech and ...
Carrots that look like sticks - The Dismal Science
Oct 23, 2012 •
A well known result in the contracts literature in that if the output of one or more tasks is more straight forward to measure than the output of other tasks then piece-rate incentive schemes will lead to a distortion of effort toward the more easily m...
Do we get the economic policy we deserve? - The Dismal Science
Oct 22, 2012 •
A number of economic bloggers have in recent times commented on policy ideas coming from various politicians. Matt Nolan on QE, Eric Crampton on exchange rates, Seamus Hogan on local workers and me on the F&P takeover, to name just a few of th...
Why co-operatives in farming? - The Dismal Science
Oct 19, 2012 •
A few days ago Ele Ludemann at the Homepaddock blog noted that Co-ops key to feeding world and in a sense she is right. Co-ops are more common in argiculture than any other sector of the economy. The big question is Why? To see why start from the idea...
Offshoring and middle-income workers - The Dismal Science
Oct 17, 2012 •
A point about the wage distribution noted by labour economists has been about a relative decline in wages at the middle of the income distribution relative to wages at the top and bottom, or a 'polarisation' of the labour market. In the 1980s and 1990s...
Wren-Lewis on Haldane on economics - The Dismal Science
Oct 16, 2012 •
As I have noted before Andrew G Haldane has asked the question, What have the economists ever done for us? In this article Haldane makes two claims, “Two developments – one academic, one policy-related – appear to have been responsible for this ...
A new way to understand consumer surplus - The Dismal Science
Oct 10, 2012 •
At VoxEu.org Jeremy Bulow and Paul Klemperer have a new article on A new way to understand consumer surplus, price controls, and rent seeking. Bulow and Klemperer show that consumer surplus in any market equals the area between the demand curve and th...
The family owned farm - The Dismal Science
Oct 07, 2012 •
Over at Homepaddock Ele Ludemann is discussing the ownership of farms and the profitability of farms: These are usually larger family owned businesses. They have economies of scale that smaller ones lack and don’t have problems of governance and ma...