Eric Crampton • Aug 04, 2015 •
Well, this is the dumbest thing I've heard in the past... half year?Steve Moore, from the Civil Aviation Authority was on Morning Report describing the new rules on flying drones. Bottom line: unless your local government has said it's ok to fly a remo... Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 15, 2015 •
Here's public health Associate Professor Marewa Glover:There are now more ex-smoking vapers helping smokers to quit than there are paid smoking cessation practitioners. Meanwhile, Government-paid smoking cessation workers peddle their patches and gum, sprays and meds, and insist upon smokers attending group therapy.If the Government and public health advocates stuck to a precautionary approach we could almost forgive them, … Read More
Eric Crampton • May 02, 2015 •
If the one paying the piper calls the tune, be careful who you let pay for dinner.Britain's NHS is considering rationing healthcare by a measure of deservingness. Here's The Guardian:The NHS plans to dramatically increase rationing of patients’ access to care and treatment in an effort to balance its books, a new survey of health bosses reveals.Almost two in five … Read More
Eric Crampton • Dec 03, 2014 •
Last week's column for Insights argued against Obama's new regulations mandating calorie counts on standard menu items at large chains. A snippet:The costs of mandatory calorie counts are pretty obvious. In addition to the usual labelling costs, they also make menus a lot more rigid. For places like McDonald’s, it’s pretty easy.Standard menu items across thousands of locations make … Read More
Eric Crampton • Nov 07, 2014 •
I reprised paternalism and public health in a column at Werewolf; I'm to be contributing a column there on an ongoing basis. Read the whole thing; here's a snippet.In the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, economists, myself included, generally expect that, on average and in most cases, people make the best decisions they can given the information … Read More
Eric Crampton • Apr 07, 2014 •
Straight cash transfers should always be the null against which in-kind transfers get assessed.More evidence that the null's pretty decent comes today from Cunha in the latest AEJ: Applied Economics. A randomised control trial of cash versus in-kind fo... Read More
Seamus Hogan • Oct 30, 2013 •
Eric's link to this article about taxes on unhealthy food, has started me thinking again about how to do welfare economics when using a paternalistic value judgement. As I noted in my original Offsetting post, it is perfectly legitimate to invoke pater... Read More
Eric Crampton • Aug 03, 2013 •
My column on the economics of self-control is up at CANTA. A few choice excerpts: If the psychologists and the behavioural economists are right, then we effectively have warring factions inside our head, all the time. There's the me who wants to chec... Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 18, 2013 •
Conspiracies and power struggles everywhere. Here's Auckland's Boyd Swinburn on the New York soda ban being overturned. Boyd Swinburn, the University of Auckland's professor of population nutrition and global health, said the court battle's significa... Read More
Eric Crampton • Mar 04, 2013 •
First rule of Microeconomist Club: commit yourself to methodological individualism and respect the world's rich diversity of utility functions. Consider that others' actions may be inspired by the optimisation of a utility function the likes of which is beyond your ken. Second rule of Microeconomist Club: cast into the outer darkness those doing violence to the first rule. Read More