Michael Reddell • Oct 09, 2018 •
Browsing on The Treasury’s website the other day, it was the title that caught my eye: “Talkin’ about a revolution”. I’m rather wary of revolutions. Even when – not always, or perhaps even often – good and noble ideas help inspire them, the outcomes all too often leave a great deal to be desired. There are various, … Read More
Michael Reddell • Aug 27, 2018 •
We had confirmation yesterday that departure cards are to be scrapped. This was flagged by the Prime Minister a few months ago, and I wrote about the issue here. Since then it appears that there has been no proper public consultative process. As I noted in March I’m sure airlines and airport operators hate the cards. There … Read More
Guest Author • May 21, 2018 •
Jan Rabaey, University of California, Berkeley Every decade or so, the wireless industry rolls out a new cellular communications standard that can transmit more data more quickly. Already under development is the next round, called “5G” because it’s the fifth major generation of these standards for encoding and transmitting data over radio waves. The … Read More
Eric Crampton • May 03, 2018 •
We’ve known about the problems of publication bias at least since 1992. If it’s easier to get statistically significant results published than insignificant results, then there are whole literatures that become untrustworthy. Andrea Menclova at Canterbury is doing something about it. This has been a while in the making – we were talking about it when I was still at … Read More
Michael Reddell • Apr 12, 2018 •
Just yesterday I wrote, in response to a comment that My point simply was that there is no obvious correlation, in the cross section, between population size and GDP per capita (or productivity). I’m not aware of any serious observer arguing otherwise At the level of very simple correlations, I’d illustrated this lack of relationship – whether for all … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 29, 2018 •
Michael Wade, IMD Business School This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. The dealings that have been revealed between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook have all the trappings of a Hollywood thriller: a Bond villain-style CEO, a reclusive billionaire, a naïve and conflicted whistle-blower, a hipster data scientist turned politico, an academic … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 28, 2018 •
Vincent Mitchell, University of Sydney; Andrew Stephen, University of Oxford, and Bernadette Kamleitner, Vienna University of Economics and Business This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. In the aftermath of revelations about the alleged misuse of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica, many social media users are … Read More
Guest Author • Mar 08, 2018 •
Adam Ni, Australian National University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to transform China’s military into the world’s most powerful force by 2050. And he could be on track to do it. On the opening day of its National People’s Congress in Beijing yesterday, … Read More
Guest Author • Feb 09, 2018 •
Guevara Noubir, Northeastern University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. U.S. military officials were recently caught off guard by revelations that servicemembers’ digital fitness trackers were storing the locations of their workouts – including at or near military bases and clandestine sites around the world. But this threat … Read More
Alison Campbell • Feb 08, 2018 •
No sooner have I written a post about the synergy between FB and blogging then it happens again 🙂 Again, hat-tip to Yvette d’Entremont, who posted a link to an article purporting to tell consumers how to distinguish between GM and ‘regular’ tomatoes. The writer of that article certainly wears their heart on their sleeve – just look … Read More