Public Health Expert • Apr 03, 2018 •
Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Anja Mizdrak, Dr Cristina Cleghorn From 1 April 2018, the UK is putting in place a type of sugary drinks tax – actually a “soft drinks industry levy”. This blog reviews how they are doing it, early signs of its success, and ponders its relevance for NZ. We also take this opportunity to … Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 08, 2018 •
For the past several years, public health lobbyists have pretended that all opposition to sugar taxes is ideologically motivated or dishonest. They have argued that the only thing stopping the government from implementing their beneficent proposals has been the actions of nefarious interest groups. And so it is interesting to read what the Ministry of Health’s officials actually thought about … Read More
Paul Walker • Feb 05, 2018 •
At the 2018 ASSA meeting Luigi Zingales delivered a lecture honouring Oliver Hart, co-winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize for economics. In part Zingales said, In the 1970s, this question [the make-or-buy dLuigi Zingaleecision] started to receive attention in the so-called transaction-cost literature. The key contributions during that period were Alchian and Demsetz (1972), Williamson (1971 and … Read More
Paul Walker • Jan 22, 2018 •
At the Marginal Revolution blog Tyler Cowen writes on the new biography of economist Edith Penrose, No Ordinary Woman: The Life of Edith Penrose, by Angela Penrose. Cowen writes, What a dramatic and eventful book. Edith Penrose (1914-1996) is a not so well-known but highly underrated economist, with her … Read More
John Pickering • Dec 21, 2017 •
A few of weeks ago I outed the multi-million-dollar exercise that is the Quality Evaluation component of the performance based research fund (PBRF) as a futile exercise because there was no net gain in research dollars for the NZ academic community. Having revealed the Emperor’s new clothes, I awaited the call from the Minister in … Read More
Robert Hickson • Nov 08, 2017 •
We’re gonna’ need a bigger band wagon. Faced with predictions of mass unemployment due to increasing automation calls to implement a universal basic income have been growing. This involves giving everyone an income regardless of whether they work or not. Though it is getting a less favourable welcome in Australia, because of what it … Read More
Robert Hickson • Sep 24, 2017 •
Joey Eschrich, writing in Slate, suggests that the futures industry has a “dearth of imagination”. He contends that futurists pay too little attention to “post-capitalist” futures. “As we fret over the future, we worry about rising sea levels and robotic job-snatchers, but the economic and political supremacy of the capitalist market doesn’t seem to be up for … Read More
Donal Curtin • Dec 18, 2016 •
Surrounded by “isn’t it awful”, “the world is going to the dogs” types? Here are two antidotes: Nobel laureate Angus Deaton’s The Great Escape: Health, Wealth and the Origins of Inequality and Johan Norberg’s Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. Both document the immense progress made in the past three hundred years by large parts … Read More
Michael Reddell • Dec 14, 2016 •
Last week, The Treasury hosted a guest lecture featuring two visiting academics under the heading Brexit, Trump & Economics: Where did we go wrong. One of the visitors – Samuel Bowles, now a professor at the Santa Fe Insitute -had been around long enough that in his youth he had served as an economic adviser in Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, … Read More
Michael Reddell • Dec 08, 2016 •
Bill English is reported to have the numbers to become leader of the National Party and, thus, our next Prime Minister. And if does succeed in that quest he has indicated that Steven Joyce will become the Minister of Finance. That news had me digging out a couple of posts I’d written this year on Mr Joyce’s comments and claims. … Read More