Continue reading →

Yep. Ned is back for another crack at internet stardom.

Continue reading →

You may need to read back over the post , which is thoroughly worthwhile in itself (for eco geeks, or anyone with an interest in social science) but I lerved this comment. There are no simple mistakes in applied macro, Nick! Unless one counts asking, on a public forum, provoca...

Continue reading →

Paul Frijters analyses the topical economic issue facing Australia's resource industry and the public: the Federal Government's proposed Resource Super Profits Tax. He identifies all the key stakeholders and how the proposed legislation change will affect them.

Continue reading →

It's been raining on and off just about every day in Darwin for more than two weeks. Who cares you might ask? Well, it's the dry season. You get the occasional shower in the dry season but not rain for weeks on end. It's certainly never happened before in the 27 years I've liv...

Continue reading →

I discover, that while I'm on the other side of the world, the Age and SMH have published a column they asked me to write on the new resource rent tax. They've published it, but edited and garbled various bits of it. Anyway, for better or worse, here's the original. It’s stran...

Continue reading →

So asks Don of Ed . It's sufficiently off-topic to warrant its own thread. Here's my own first stab at the question, but it's doubtless very unsophisticated, and sure to be substantially revised after a robust discussion. Belief has a wide variety of meanings connected by fami...

Continue reading →

As the pseudo debate about the resources rent tax continues to vomit forth, it's striking how little we have changed even in the industrial age, and the challenges we have in protecting our philosophical gains. When humanity began farming we entered a world in which prosperity...

Continue reading →

Evolutionary psychologists have been busy proposing explanations for religiosity . Belief in transcendent conscious beings might promote survival, they argue, by instilling hope and optimism. Or it might be a by-product of other naturally selected susceptibilities, such as inf...

Continue reading →

A "lot of opinion polling is useless because it doesn’t understand its limitations" writes Graham Young . One of the major limitations of polling is the tendency of respondents to answer questions about things they know nothing about. A series of studies have shown how respond...

Continue reading →

White to play Smyslov vs Oll 29. ? See game for solution. And this is a cute game too.

Continue reading →

Courtesy of your local Republican candidate .

Continue reading →

I'd be surprised if any of the recommendations in Henry generate a higher internal rate of return, greater efficiency gains per unit of effort than the recommendation to simplify tax returns for five odd million Australians, something that can be done simply by offering tax cu...

Continue reading →

This is a quick post, I'd like to make it longer but won't have the time. It's worked up from a comment on a post by Kate Lundy which articulates why e-literacy of various kinds should be part of the national curriculum. Couldn't agree more. But a couple of things occur to me....

Continue reading →

"How much attention did you pay to this week’s Federal Budget?" For many respondents to this week's Essential Research Poll , the answer was not much -- 44 per cent said that they paid little or no attention to the budget. But in the same survey, 80 per cent were able to expre...

Continue reading →

It was always going to be a problem. What do you call your new improved version of Labour when the 'New Labour' brand has become stale and discredited? David Miliband is backing 'Next Labour', a tag coined by the New Statesman's James Macintyre in March this year . In an inter...

Continue reading →

With Gordon Brown gone, the Labour leadership contest was on. The first candidate to announce was former foreign secretary David Miliband . Then a few days later his brother, former energy secretary Ed, announced that he would also stand . It's a contest that's been brewing fo...

Continue reading →

This is a epoch making day. Journalism is now reaching its perfect equilibrium form which it cannot be shifted. Several portents have pointed towards this. The high priests of Journalism, the parliamentary press gallery, have long understood that race calling is not only cheap...

Continue reading →

Rob Bray sent us this guest post. He added this to the email he sent to Jacques making contact with Troppo "I am a recently retired public servant from FaHCSIA who is now working part-time as Research Fellow at SPEAR in the RSE (old RSSS bit) at the ANU, who for years has been...

Continue reading →

Warren Buffett when asked to sum up the basic point of life went for this formulation. The purpose of life is to be loved by as many people as possible among those you want to have love you. Remarkably similar to Adam Smith's formulation actually - that what we crave most is d...

Continue reading →

Budget Week should in principle be a great opportunity for an educated national discussion about issues of public finance and macroeconomic management. But unfortunately the budget debate is always shrouded in such a thick fog of political rhetoric and misinformation that it t...

Continue reading →

It's three in the morning here in Canberra. The BBC is reporting that the Labour-Lib Dem negotiations have collapsed while George Pascoe-Watson , former political editor for the Sun, is tweeting about a Lib-Conservative coalition with cabinet posts for the Lib Dems . The IEA's...

Continue reading →

From Stumbling and Mumbling In one respect, the Left should be a little worried by the Conservatives’ failure. To see what I mean, consider John Kay’s claim that there’s an intellectual vacuum” on the Left: The search for a practical political philosophy for the left in Europe...

Continue reading →

Joseph Agassi Liberal Nationalism for Israel: Towards an Israeli National Identity . Gefen, Jerusalem, 1999. This book is a passionate call for a public debate in Israel and elsewhere to resolve some fundamental and crippling disabilities in Israeli politics. It first appeared...

Continue reading →

There are lots of explanations for why economics has become so excessively formalised. Because much of its subject matter is readily quantify able - because it deals with money and the creation and distribution of standardised things it is certainly possible, and beneficial to...

Continue reading →

"Why is everyone voting Conservative?" tweeted an exasperated Holly Hawthorn , "VOTE LIB DEMS!!" But it was already too late. By the time the votes were counted the Liberal Democrats had lost thirteen seats and picked up only eight. And most of the seats they lost went to the...

Continue reading →

Some time ago a coworker of mine found a file on the train and gave it to me. A thick wad of papers detailing a conspiracy against all that was good in the world: The Queen, her constitution and her mighty railways....and the writer's right to place her wheelie bin on the kerb...

Continue reading →

One of the catchiest phrases doing the rounds on Twitter as the UK election results come in is "Activate the Queen". It all started with a BBC radio interview with Professor Peter Hennessey of the University of London back in March. Here's a quick transcript: Hennessey: "The u...

Continue reading →

It's official, the UK has a hung paliament . With Labour's Teresa Pearce holding Erith and Thamesmead the BBC is reporting that "There is now no chance of the Conservatives winning a Commons majority." Since the result gives nobody any satisfaction , a quick witted commentator...

Continue reading →

For years policy experts from free market think tanks have been arguing that charter schools and vouchers boost test scores. Last year Julie Novack's report for the Institute of Public Affairs insisted that: "Voucher programs around the world have been shown to improve the aca...

Continue reading →

The Henry Review is an ambitious document, conceived early in the life of a new government at a time when budget surpluses stretched as far as the eye could see, surpluses which could be used to ease the tensions between winners and losers that are the inevitable consequence o...

Continue reading →

“I’ve just felt I was living and breathing a George Orwell novel..." Update: JQ lists the pros (several) and cons (none). The reporting of the resource rent tax plan has been poor, and last night's ABC television coverage was a good example. In his 'Finance' segment of the New...

Continue reading →

Anzac day is when Australians and New Zealanders remember their casualties of the first World War and other conflicts. It has become a defining event for the sense of nationhood of the Australians and solemn commemorations are held all over the country. Sharing the same backgr...

Continue reading →

Rudd has back-flipped on a number of government policies – the ditching of the insulation rebate scheme, junking the promise to build 260 childcare centres, the ETS decision (now postponed) and perhaps some wasteful spending on education. He has also had to toughen the asylum...

Continue reading →

Shane Wright (reproduced by Peter Martin ) weighs up pros and cons (mainly cons) of WA secession from the perspective of WA. Lets ask a natural counter question: What if the rest of Australia would be better off without WA? Specifically, should Australia still have a single cu...

Continue reading →

Andy Foulds is obviously a clever fellow. This image of economists is not new. I don't know when he did it but it's been doing the rounds for ages. Yesterday I had a great lunch with an economist and was amazed to be told that he didn't know of it. So for those who don't know...

Continue reading →