Someone who emailed me saying he was coming to my presentation at Sydney Uni tomorrow night suggested we catch up for dinner. Which I'll be doing. Then I suggested to him that I'd invite anyone who was at the presentation who wanted to come along to come along. Not sure how th...
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No time to read the paper right now, but it looks great. Kantian Optimization, Social Ethos, and Pareto Efficiency Date: 2012-03 By: John E. Roemer (Dept. of Political Science, Yale University) Although evidence accrues in biology, anthropology and experimental economics that...
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Last year I did a presentation on Government 2.0 to Masters Government Students at Sydney Uni and it was lots of fun. So they invited me back. I suggested that this time we do it using the web properly, so I'll do a presentation but it will be filmed so that it can be hoisted...
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If you discovered that you had cancer would you (a) find a doctor who is an expert in treating your disease and follow their advice, or (b) attempt to devise your own treatment by reading about cancer on the internet? According to some sources, Apple founder Steve Jobs may hav...
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A Club Troppo Research Project In the Melbourne telephone directory, there are: 89 Head(s) 5 Neck(s) 13 Body(s) 1 Shoulder 14 Arms 69 Hand(s) 35 Finger(s) 52 Legg(s) 27 Foot(s) 1 Feet 6 Toe(s) 2 Heart(s) - A Time Lord? 22 Lung(s) 13 Kidney(s) No Stomach 1 Bowels No Penis, but...
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Responding to Noah Smith , Krugman says the following about the long term effects of the "Macro Wars" . On the academic side: look, to a first approximation nobody ever admits being wrong about anything. But my sense is that a lot of younger economists are aware, even if they...
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Risk theories typically assume individuals make risky choices using probability weights that differ from objective probabilities. Recent theories suggest that probability weights vary depending on which portion of a risky environment is made salient. Using experimental data we...
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Lawyers like their evidence to be nice and straightforward. Not to statistical. This is a real problem in some negligence cases. A surgeon might be a good surgeon, might have well below average adverse events, but if something screws up, doctrines like res ipsa loquitur - " th...
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Why don’t women patent? "In Why Don’t Women Patent? , a recent NBER paper, Jennifer Hunt et al. present a stark fact: Only 5.5% of the holders of commercialized patents are women." Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution . Innovation and inequality: What effect do now products and...
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In the USA (a presidential election year), there is a considerable debate on how much emphasis government policy should assign to economic growth (properly interpreted to encompass all externalities and market failures) and how much to income and welfare distribution. The argu...
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I tend to avoid business class even when entitled to it except for overnight flights, but being entitled to business class travel on a government board the computer always requires me to explain myself. And though it has an option where you can say that you're entitled to fly...
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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="220" caption="Tom Derrick - a good man to have on your side"] [/caption] I happened upon this on the front page of today's Wikipedia. Tom Derrick (1914–1945) was an Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross (VC) during the Second World...
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A a recent function I had the privilege to listen to David Halpern who heads up the 'Nudge unit' in the UK Cabinet Office. The "Applying Behavioural Insights" unit led by the aforementioned Halpern seeks to apply the insights of behavioural economics/psychology to public polic...
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Even Andrew Bolt is shocked . On Tuesday mining magnate Clive Palmer fronted the media and announced that the US Central Intelligence Agency is using the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a campaign to undermine Australia's coal industry. Palmer appeared in front of the cameras b...
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This lovely painting goes on sale this Thursday night at Menzies Auctioneers . An artist friend of mine isn't too impressed with Lin Onus, but then I think his work is lovely. So there. This painting will go for an estimated $150-200,000 plus buyers' fee plus GST, which is one...
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When the Koch vs Cato controversy erupted blogger Skip Oliva was all over it . Now he's just over it : When you cut through all the bullshit—90% of which is coming from the Cato side—what you’re left with is two old men who simply refuse to compromise. Charles Koch signed an a...
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This immortal line - the key to the Republican nomination (With Mitt Romney having to play along to try to win the nomination) is from a column by Richard Cohen. It captures the spirit of the times, which I have said before is like the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Czechoslov...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1nHNtZ148I A few weeks ago I attended the latest F.H. Gruen lecture at ANU by the terrific English economist Andrew Oswald.* He's one of those economists who, in addition to being formidable in his (many) fields within the profession, is also a...
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According to most commentators, it was French politician René Lenoir who coined the term 'social exclusion' (l’exclusion sociale). But the idea that there is a disparate group of disadvantaged citizens who are excluded from economic, social and political participation is nothi...
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Herewith Bob McDonald's third instalment. As readers will note, I published the first instalment saying that at a superficial level Bob's argument seemed interesting and indeed persuasive. Since then people who've taken a closer interest in the debate and the issues have been...
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A commodities boom can temporarily boost government revenue, says Malcolm Turnbull . Mostly that's a good thing. But when governments respond by making non-temporary changes to the budget, we have a problem: If, rolling in a big cyclical surplus, a government were to cut incom...
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Herewith Bob McDonald's second post on fisheries economics. With Australia being the last 'settled' continent, the flattest and driest and without reliable streamflow from snow melt it is not outrageous to suggest its fisheries are unique. Until WW2 Australian commercial fish...
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We are in the middle of the electoral cycle, which seems a good time to give advice on which policies make good economics in the sense of being in the interest of the long-run welfare of Australia. My top 5 of do-able economic policies, some big and some small, that a governme...
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On a Background Briefing program on micro-targeting of political campaigning and advertising, I was being pressed by the interviewer. If people hate negative ads, if they degrade the reputation of politicians, why do they do it? I likened it to over-fishing where each fisher p...
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A few months ago, Sam Roggeveen from the Lowy Institute asked me to talk at a function the Institute was holding on secrecy. I said I wasn't particularly well qualified to talk directly on secrecy regarding national security and foreign affairs, but I was happy to speak about...
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A lawsuit by the Koch brothers threatens the Cato Institute's reputation for independence When scholars at the libertarian Cato Institute came out against the Gulf War, Olin Foundation president William E Simon was outraged. The foundation ended up withdrawing its support and,...
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The Lord's Resistance Army and its leader Joseph Kony have been in the news for years (here's a 2006 story from the ABC's Foreign Correspondent ). But this week the issue went viral thanks to a video by advocacy group Invisible Children . With help from celebrities like Rihann...
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Many years ago my father used to respond to some of my wilder claims or flights of fancy by asking "if you're so smart how come you're not rich?" This amused him but I didn't find it very funny - and not just because it deflated my pretentions. I appreciate it more and more wi...
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"Make the media more accountable for their sins, and worry less about new technologies and freedom of speech". That's a one-line summary of Ray Finkelstein's Independent Media Inquiry . It argues for a new system of media regulation to apply to journalists, commentators and mo...
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Inaugurated on this day in 1861 , Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, is as popular as ever. Movies: America's 16th president features in two movies to be released this year. The first is a serious bio-pic by Steven Spielberg while the second is based on...
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A failure in the realm of ideas: It's crisis as usual for the left. Despite the global financial crisis, left of centre parties are struggling in the polls. Francis Fukuyama puts it down to a "a failure in the realm of ideas" arguing that: "The left has not been able to make a...
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A voice of reason from way out West speaks clear unvarnished truth. That the minerals Mother Nature once laid down in her youth, are the hope of teeming millions seeking sanctuary and jobs. Free Enterprise the means by which we’ll fill their starving gobs. We hear the message...
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Well not bird flu actually, but decoupling of median incomes and productivity growth. About as nasty an economic development as one could imagine. FROM THE OECD INSIGHTS BLOG Do workers reap the benefits of productivity growth? In the last twenty years of the 20th century, eac...
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8urgvC0TR8&feature=related
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