The prisoner's dilemma is a simple and famous illustration of a problem that's very common. One of the areas in which it is common is the arms race where two parties competing with each other each invest to outdo the other. This is visible in lots of situations. In some areas...
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Do we know in social science what it is that we are measuring or does any bit of data we look at on closer inspection reveal more complexity, no matter how close we look, just like a fractal? Another way to put this is to ask whether anything we measure is solid, concrete and...
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https://twitter.com/NGruen1/status/1529689205420720129 Herewith today's column in the Age and SMH . George Orwell was a stickler for plain and simple English in public discourse. He argued that one could escape some of “the worst follies of orthodoxy” by simplifying one’s lang...
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I went to see Lincoln last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The first five minutes was pretty dreadful with Lincoln meeting a couple of black soldiers who repeated the various lines of the Gettysburg Address to him. Ugggghhh. Death by anachronism. But the film gets down to the...
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I enjoyed Waleed Aly's latest National Times column . But the more I read it, the more I wonder what he means. "Labor has lost the plot, and the narrative" says the headline in the Age . According to Aly, Governments thrive on narrative and Labor doesn't have one. It's a famil...
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At the moment, I am writing an empirical study into racism in Queensland, which I will report on at a later date. It made me reflect on the basic question of what racism actually is. Let me give you seven possible scenarios to help us reflect on what we think racism is, whilst...
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Yesterday I came across a fairly innocuous story about the seafood industry on AM . It is headlined (on the website) and introduced thus. Australia's seafood capital under pressure from imports TONY EASTLEY: Port Lincoln calls itself Australia's seafood capital. On South Austr...
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Does The John Bates Clark Medal Boost Subsequent Productivity And Citation Success? , Ho Fai Chan, Bruno S. Frey, Jana Gallus, Benno Torgler Despite the social importance of awards, they have been largely disregarded by academic research in economics. This paper investigates w...
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http://youtu.be/5WCTn4FljUQ
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A video and an essay all on the same subject: measurement in the social sciences. Summary: It's really worth doing and doing better, even though it's really hard. First, health statistician and visualisation expert Hans Rosling, co-founder of Gapminder and justly famous for hi...
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It's an old debate with a nice Keynes quote routinely trotted out: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who...
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Facts are no match for a compelling narrative, says Jonathan Green . Despite the efforts of left leaning bloggers, conservatives are winning arguments and elections because they have better stories. Voters see themselves as struggling with an ever rising cost of living, the fe...
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When I first joined the mortgage broking industry I was struck by all the calls the industry itself made for regulation. Mostly this was not out of some evil scheme that would be easily predicted by Chicago inspired public choice theory. Brokers weren't particularly in favour...
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We empirically test the relationship between hiring discrimination and labour market tightness at the level of the occupation. To this end, we conduct a correspondence test in the youth labour market. In line with theoretical expectations, we find that, compared to natives, ca...
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Your average workshop dinner sees 20 adults or so taken out for free food and drinks, paid for by a hosting university. They get drunk, are rowdy, eat too much, say things they normally wouldn’t, and have to carry on the next day with hangovers and smelly clothes. From a stand...
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Minami Minegishi was in tears . After being caught spending the night at Generations boy-band member Alan Shirahama, the J-pop idol lost her place in AKB48 's Team B and was demoted to 'trainee'. Shortly afterwards she appeared on YouTube, her head shaved, begging the fans for...
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I had the good fortune to see this remarkable thing recently. And I thought as I was in the Sistine Chapel something I've thought before and have probably pontificated about here at pontification central. (Checking I find this post for instance). Why are there not more facsimi...
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What to do in a discipline once it is clear that it is impossible to base one’s knowledge on anything underlying that can be reasonably accurately measured and when you know that you cannot construct a consistent story that ties all the sub-problems in a field together? We are...
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From today's Age and SMH column: A pillar of economic reform is competitive neutrality. We strip government utilities of tax and regulatory advantages over private competitors because we want the best to win, not the most favoured. But banking is a different country. They do t...
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Our language is changing all the time and is probably changing faster than at any time in its history. We now tweet things and Google them and have LOLs AFAIK. In any event there are some things our language is stubborn about. It doesn't like innovation deep in its operating s...
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OK, this post will stick, irritatingly, to the top of the front page for this week to let you all know that I'll be sending off the Crikey subs soon. One reason for the reminder is that I'm surprised that I've received less interest this year - is Crikey sliding in popularity?...
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Nobody knows exactly how much it costs to administer Income Management. But government estimates suggest that it could be as high as $150 a week per person in remote areas. According a recent report from the Australian National Audit Office : ... departments were aware that pr...
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http://youtu.be/0YM9Ereg2Zo
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Osper is a smart new London startup. Here's its pitch to Angel investors . Osper is a cash card for young people with a mobile banking app with login for mum and dad (with parental controls) and login for young people (which teaches responsible money management). The cash card...
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As I've said before, the PM's Science Prize is a blast . And they're now taking nominations . So if you have or had a great science teacher, or know or are a great Australian scientist. Now's the time to nominate.
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Take your bog-standard first-year economics story of why money (sea shells, coins, notes, bank statements) exist. Money, you will be told, is a means of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of accounting, thoughts going back to David Hume (18th century) and earlier. When exp...
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