Guest Author • Dec 22, 2017 •
Reviewed by Susan Rapley Modern zoos exist at a difficult intersection: whether their containment and treatment of animals is morally and ethically justified, juxtaposed against an increasing need within the wider world for their research and conservation efforts. In Zoo Ethics: The Challenges of Compassionate Conservation, Jenny Gray seeks to investigate these conflicting concerns, a task she is well … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jul 28, 2015 •
I've been blogging a bit over at The Sandpit - the NZ Initiative's blog. A few recent highlights there:Eminent domain is not nearly as awesome as the latest Productivity Commission report makes out.Notes from my chat with Bryan Crump at Nights on Radio... Read More
Eric Crampton • May 14, 2015 •
I've been in Wellington for the better part of a year now. I've attended a few different sessions from various Ministries on topics relating to stuff we're working on or might work on here at the Initiative.I've never properly understood what Whanau Ora, the new(ish) welfare delivery system, was or how it worked. And so I'd ask around a bit … Read More
Eric Crampton • Aug 04, 2014 •
Paul Ryan's welfare plan, including stronger reliance on case managers to guide clients out of income support and into work, reminds me an awful lot of the Beaulier and Caplan piece on behavioural economics and welfare. It was published in Kyklos; the link above goes to the ungated version.I'd paraphrased their paper a few years ago:If we … 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
Eric Crampton • Feb 04, 2014 •
Overshadowed (predictably) by Lorde's Grammy wins was Labour's policy announcement. Should Labour form government, they'd like to pay parents $60 per week for the first year of the child's life. 95% of children are meant to be covered by the plan, which is not income contingent for the first $150,000 of family income but abates to zero immediately at … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jan 14, 2014 •
TANSTAAFL applies, as always.Matt Zwolinski makes the libertarian case for a guaranteed annual income over at the BHL blog. It's not a bad case. Here's Matt:The first of these posts elaborated on the (quasi-Nozickian) argument that a BIG could serve as a kind of rough-and-ready compensation for past injustice. David Friedman and David Henderson both took issue with this argument … Read More
Eric Crampton • Nov 09, 2013 •
I'd joked about the class-entrenching function of etiquette a couple of years back.Etiquette rules, like the downward fork tines rule, that deliberately hobble the person making the display have a signalling value: it's the peacock's tail. Folks who've been able to spend hundreds of hours practicing how to eat in a deliberately hobbled fashion are then able to demonstrate … Read More
Eric Crampton • Jun 01, 2013 •
In the futile hope that maybe, just maybe, folks' views about welfare policy might just stand to be informed by data, here are a few testable hypotheses I've seen floating around. They posit things that are knowable, and I'm sure data exists to resolve things. Let's walk through a few of them.First, how do poor people use money? I tend … Read More
Eric Crampton • Feb 04, 2013 •
Chris Dillow lays out the basic problem with living wages mandates. While having more money makes people happier, being unemployed is pretty awful. So whether mandating living wages can make sense will depend on how many people are forced out of work a... Read More