Eric Crampton • Feb 28, 2015 •
Economists agonise, rightly, over causality: how can we tell whether one thing causes another thing rather than the other way round or whether both things might just both caused by some underlying third thing.Meanwhile, here's how the debate on causality plays out in the political arena.Under Labour minimum wage went up significantly and unemployment went down significantly. Time for a … Read More
Eric Crampton • Sep 09, 2014 •
Remember the story of the West German auto exec who, after touring the Trabant plant, wept because the value of the steel and other inputs going in exceeded the value of the car coming out? The Trabant plant was destroying value.That's how I felt on re... Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 31, 2013 •
Last weekend, I noted Nick Wilson's suggestion that we ban the import of cars that can't block cellphone use inside the car.His letter to the NZ Med Journal, on which his blog post was based, has a few other interesting bits. He has a few other policy suggestions for reducing cell phone use by drivers. Here they … Read More
Eric Crampton • Oct 29, 2013 •
Suppose I developed some new measure of how terrible journalistic reporting on health is. And by my new measure, fully 10% of newspaper articles on Stuff demonstrate a combination of complete innumeracy and absolute credulity. Suppose I then compared it to some prior, entirely different, measure of press innumeracy which listed only 6% of articles as being really bad in … Read More