Richard Green is an honours graduate from Newcastle who is also an interesting and thoughtful fellow. He is eager for an audience for his work. So I've upped his permissions from 'subscriber' to 'author' so expect some posts from him in the early new year.

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I'm going to try to write some posts about public goods as part of writing something about the new age of public goods. As readers to this blog will know, I've got a bit of a thing about public goods, and most recently argued that Web 2.0 is the product of ' emergent public go...

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A bit of holiday trivia for you. I came upon a form of tourism I didn't quite believe. "Travelling Gentlemen" accompanied their countrymen to the Crimean War, and set up out of cannon range from the battlefields with their wives and hounds and had a jolly good time of it. Thei...

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Interesting stuff methinks: In Growing up in a Recession: Beliefs and the Macroeconomy (NBER Working Paper No. 15321), co-authors Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo substantiate the importance of the historical economic environment in shaping economic attitudes, affecting...

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The lads from the BBC radio comedy The Now Show, distill the essence of Copenhagen. The English Blog has the transcript

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I've been watching the Regulatory Responsibility Bill for some time. "What is the Regulatory Responsibility Bill?" I hear you cry. Well it's one of the last gasps of the ideological fervour that grips our antipodean cousins across the trench in New Zealand. As I observed in a...

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I'm dreadful at Christmas Cards. I don't think much of signing hundreds and having them sent off by a secretary, so if I do write them I try to write a bit on them, otherwise I can't see the point. I'm dead late this year again - though with a bit of an excuse - and the cards...

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[caption id="attachment_34760" align="alignright" width="415"] Julie Hempenstall from Bendigo[/caption] Here's today's column in the SMH which was slightly edited back from the original. Who is Julie Hempenstall? She lives in Bendigo and she likes reading Australia's historic...

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This is a survey of the treatment of selected themes in the famous textbook from the first edition in 1948 to the last in 1995. The sales figures: Edition, Year, Author(s,) Sales 1, 1948, Samuelson, 121,453 2, 1951, Samuelson, 137,256 3, 1955, Samuelson, 191,706 4, 1958, Samue...

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Jumping the shark Untill Tuesday night Ian Plimer was the respectable face of climate scepticism in Australia. Plimer looks the part of the distinguished professor, and as a geologist gives the impression of understanding the long run forces affecting the earth's climate, as o...

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"The concept of utility in economics refers to the pleasure, or relief of pain, associated with the consumption of goods and services" writes economist John Quiggin . Another economist, Robert Frank, suggests that it is closer to the idea of satisfaction. In Luxury Fever he wr...

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How will Paul Samuelson be remembered? This is the positive side of the story, the glowing record of the Nobel Laureate and author of the most widely read textbook in modern times. History may be kind to Samuelson. He had the good fortune to surf three waves that carried all b...

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It seemed like a simple enough question. What do economists mean by 'utility'? But after scouring the literature I'm more confused than when I began. The Penguin Dictionary of Economics defines it as: "The pleasure or satisfaction derived by an individual from being in a parti...

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Kopenhagen is currently witnessing two comic relief shows. One is regularly seen in the amusement area known as Tivoli, and the other is the climate change conference. The core element of pure humour in the second circus is that the actions of many governments are diametricall...

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As usual I'm a year behind the publicity machine, so I missed the original reviews of this book , as well as the fanfare during the Sydney Writers' Festival, which the author Mark Rowlands attended. This post is for any reader who might have encountered The Philosopher and the...

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Here's yesterday's column in the Financial Review coinciding with the release of the Draft Report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. The Fin's headline was "Web and open government a way to a better world". The expression Web 2.0 connotes the internet as a platform for collabora...

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Balmain is not just the city of basket weavers it is also a place to find thinking drinkers and binge thinkers. Put this in your list of favorites. Shaken and Stirred , the brainchild of Parnell McGuinness and Leonie Phillips, is a space for the free exchange of opinions witho...

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Every December since 2002 Sydney's Pinchgut Opera has produced an obscure baroque opera at the City Recital Hall. The company employs top-notch instrumentalists wth period instruments that produce an incredibly haunting and evocative blend of sounds; they gather outstanding so...

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Suppose you believed the world was getting warmer due to humanity's greenhouse gas emissions and you worried about it but you cant get yourself to believe that the 200-odd countries in the world are ever going to agree to drastically reduce their emissions via some joint schem...

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''Hang on, woah woah woah woah!" If you believe Paul Sheehan we can thank Alan Jones for the demise of Malcolm Turnbull and the derailment of the CPRS. Every time a Liberal backbencher is asked why he or she withdrew their support for Ian MacFarlane's deal, the answer is the s...

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For four years now (ages in blogosphere terms) Club Troppo and On Line Opinion have sponsored a showcase of Australian independent blogging, which we call Best Blog Posts of <year>'. With Christmas fast approaching, the time has come to launch 'Best Blog Posts of 09'. On Line...

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My particular problem at the moment is which chess clock app to download. There are oodles of them. I've also downloaded a business card reader, but where do I find out which of what is often many competing apps are the best ones?

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I've been reading RG's strange columns with increasing incredulity. About how raising interest rates will drive house prices up. Now he doesn't seem to understand that you can compensate someone for increased energyprices and they might still reduce their energy consumption (b...

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