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
Guest Work • Nov 29, 2016 •
By Stephen Cushion, Cardiff University and Justin Lewis, Cardiff University During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, both sides used statistics pretty freely to back their arguments. Understandably, UK broadcasters felt compelled to balance competing perspectives, giving audiences the opportunity to hear the relative merits of leaving or remaining in the EU. In doing so, however, the truth … Read More
Michael Reddell • Nov 28, 2016 •
Fidel Castro is dead. Sadly, the same can’t be said for the brutal regime that has controlled Cuba for 57 years now – the regime that suppresses speech, religion, and the exercise of democratic freedoms that we take for granted; the regime that executed thousands of its political opponents and which, to this day, imprisons many of those brave … Read More
InfectedNZ • Nov 25, 2016 •
What might the economic costs of antibiotic/antimicrobial-resistant infections be in New Zealand? The simple answer is – we don’t know. As far as I’m aware, there’s been no New Zealand studies publicly disseminated on this topic. Therefore, we have to look overseas for reported studies. While the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013) stated the total economic cost … Read More
John Kerr • Sep 23, 2016 •
A wacky New Zealand study has been recognised at the 26th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, a celebration of the odd, weird and quirky side of science. The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative – and spur people’s interest … Read More
Guest Work • Sep 23, 2016 •
This is the final post in the three-part guest series from the Morgan Foundation’s Jess Berentson-Shaw and Geoff Simmons exploring the legacy of the myth of the rational human – Homo economicus. In our previous post we looked at how Homo economicus thinking ignores so much of what we know about human behaviour, especially in relation to public … Read More
Guest Work • Sep 21, 2016 •
This is the first in a three-part guest post series from the Morgan Foundation’s Jess Berentson-Shaw and Geoff Simmons exploring the legacy of the myth of the rational human – Homo economicus. When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? – J.M. Keynes Assumptions are science’s dirty little secret. We all make them, but we … Read More
Robert Hickson • Aug 31, 2016 •
Letting technology take more care of us will give us better lives. That’s the thesis of “technological socialism” proposed by entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Despite Bernie Sanders, it is still interesting to see the term “socialism” used with a positive intent in the US. There are two main questions here: are technologies and their applications making things … Read More