The Dismal Science

Why are we gifting so much to farmers?

Michael Reddell • May 29, 2018

• biosecurity,
• eradication,
• MPI,
• Mycoplasma bovis

Despite announcing yesterday a plan that aims to eradicate Mycoplasma bovis from New Zealand, there was no sign of the pro-active release of any background papers or analysis. We don’t have copies of the relevant Cabinet papers, or the relevant advice from The Treasury or MPI. Not that long ago, the incoming government talked of its commitment to open government, … Read More

Regulatory Catch-22?

Eric Crampton • May 25, 2018

• e-cigarettes,
• heat-not-burn tobacco,
• plain packaging,
• vaping

Last month’s court decision, and subsequent MoH position statement, mean that heat-not-burn tobacco products are legal to sell in New Zealand.  But the MoH position statement said that other tobacco control regulations will apply to reduced-risk tobacco and tobacco-derived products, barring the ban on indoor use in workplaces. Therefore, the same SFEA regulatory controls apply to smoked tobacco, heated … Read More

How competition benefits women’s pay

Donal Curtin • May 23, 2018

• competition,
• gender pay gap,
• pay equality,
• Portugal

Last year the folks at Motu came up with a great piece of research which, among other things, showed that wage discrimination against women in New Zealand was less when firms faced greater competition. The logic is simple: you might try to discriminate if you could get away with it without repercussions, but you’d pay dearly for indulging … Read More

Otago and disagreement

Eric Crampton • May 11, 2018

• e-cigarettes,
• Ministry of Health,
• public health,
• tobacco,
• vaping

Every time I think that the University of Otago’s Public Health people can’t get any worse, they go and surprise me. Today, the Initiative launched Jenesa Jeram’s excellent report on vaping and reduced-harm alternatives to smoking. It walks through the evidence on the risks of vaping, heat-not-burn products, and snus, and makes some recommendations around liberalising access so that … Read More

Crowding out

Eric Crampton • May 10, 2018

• building,
• housing,
• KiwiBuild

You should always worry at least a bit about whether a government programme crowds out some other private sector initiative. A state-provided daycare centre could crowd out existing private providers. A welfare programme could crowd out existing charitable programmes. And government house-building schemes could crowd out private development. The mechanism for crowding out is simple if you spend a few … Read More

A generous subsidy that pays off?

Michael Reddell • May 10, 2018

• PhD,
• subsidy,
• universities

Reading the Herald over lunch, I chanced upon a story under the headline $50m PhD subsidy pays off.   That is the $50 million per annum subsidy put in place more than a decade ago that allows foreign PhD students to study at domestic fees (apparently a saving for them for more than $30,000 per annum each), allows full domestic … Read More

Mind the gap

Donal Curtin • May 09, 2018

• gender pay gap,
• MOTU

We’ve been lucky, over the past year, to see two top-notch, data-heavy analyses of the gender pay gap appear in New Zealand. One, from March last year, is by AUT’s Gail Pacheco, ‘Empirical evidence of the gender pay gap in New Zealand’, and was done for the Ministry for Women. The other, also last year, was by … Read More

Unemployment doesn’t strike evenly…

Donal Curtin • May 04, 2018

• ethnicity,
• labour statistics,
• unemployment

Yesterday’s labour force data for the March quarter came out much as expected: forecasters had been expecting a 0.6% increase in employment, and they got it, and they also got their predicted 4.4% unemployment rate, down from 4.5% in the December ’17 quarter. Even if there were no immediate dramas in the data, it’s still worth picking out one aspect … Read More

Publication Bias

Eric Crampton • May 03, 2018

• Canterbury,
• Data,
• economics,
• publication bias

We’ve known about the problems of publication bias at least since 1992. If it’s easier to get statistically significant results published than insignificant results, then there are whole literatures that become untrustworthy. Andrea Menclova at Canterbury is doing something about it. This has been a while in the making – we were talking about it when I was still at … Read More

Electoral lists – a simple recommendation

Eric Crampton • Apr 30, 2018

• commission,
• electoral list,
• electorate,
• Electronic,
• government,
• New Zealand,
• parliament,
• personal data,
• voting

The Electoral Commission is worried that its published electoral lists – the list of each voter and that voter’s address – could be misused. From Bryce Edwards’ summary: Currently there is almost a “free for all” in the use of printed electoral roll data. All sorts of companies, such as debt collectors and marketers make use of the printed … Read More