[caption id="attachment_36320" align="alignleft" width="1031"] Why does this graph capture the idea of the Evaluator General? All is revealed in this post .[/caption] Luke Slawomirski, a health economist I met at the OECD over a decade ago when I proposed Gruen Tenders among o...

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The Gregorian revolution gave rise to a form of organisation that was gradually stamped out all over the Western world and then to its followers. Constitutional monarchy: A pyramid with a chief executive at the top with the rest of the pyramid made up of checks and balances on...

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I recently published this musing in my Substack newsletter. And coming across a further free kick from the policy world — something that would have negative costs and do a lot of good — I thought I'd publish both. Think of this as continuing the series begun over a decade ago...

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https://youtu.be/6uPex480hRU Above is the video of a presentation I made at NESTA in London on 15th November with discussants Claire Mellior and Martin Wolf. I reproduce (AI generated) timestamps in the shownotes of the video below. 00:00 - Introduction and Overview The talk b...

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https://youtu.be/ftssK9b8WFI Finding a formatting mess when I looked this up on Troppo , I've reposted it here for the record. I'm a bit embarrassed by my wooden speaking style. Here’s the David Solomon Lecture I’ll be giving at the Brisbane Museum of Modern Art in an hour’s t...

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I wrote a couple of pieces for apolitical a few years ago, but didn’t persevere. I then got an invitation to discuss my experience with the inevitable internal review and had a good discussion. Saying that apolitical seemed very optimised to its audience, which of course is it...

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'A wonderful, important and also a necessary book, which sets the records straight... and celebrates a remarkable quartet of women thinkers' Peter Conradi I’ve previously mentioned the two books on the Golden Age of female philosophy at Oxford and how thrilling I find the stor...

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In 2011 I think it was, I presented Kaggle to Tech23 an organisation that held an annual awards and rewards process for the best start-ups. It was a cool thing then and it's great that it's still going. However it runs in in Sydney so I don't get to it all that often. This yea...

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[caption id="attachment_35644" align="alignleft" width="1163"] For anyone who’s interested I recommend David Cayley’s series of CBC radio documentaries on Illich. (He’s the best broadcaster I’ve come across). The first series of five programs focuses on Illich’s social thought...

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I thought you’d like to know of a venture I’m on the board of which is a global monthly magazine being published out of Melbourne dedicated to publishing the best podcast interviews of the month as a printed magazine for sitting back and enjoying though it’s also being distrib...

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Below is the introduction to an essay I've written about a Scottish mid-20th-century philosopher John Macmurray. Like my essay on Polanyi, this was partly a way for me to go through his work and set it down for myself. But the interest is through the lens of aspects of Macmurr...

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[caption id="attachment_34950" align="alignleft" width="162"] Michael Haines[/caption] Michael overheard me pontificating with a friend at my local café and we got talking. After lengthy emails on various topics including universal basic income, I invited him to post on Troppo...

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The essential governance problem in March 2020 in Western countries was the overwhelming demand of the vast majority of the population to do something dramatic in response to their fear. There was a clamour to be ‘led to safety’ by populations scared to death by images in the...

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Herewith a podcast interview of me setting out my case that the New Zealand Wellbeing Budget has a relationship to wellbeing which corresponds to a Pirates Ball's relationship to pirates. It's ' themed ' as promoting wellbeing rather than being thoughtfully crafted to do so. A...

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I am all for effective vaccines and have been impressed with how fast vaccines have been developed against covid, but I never expected them to be the wonder weapons some promised them to be. After all, the yearly new vaccines against the flu never eradicated the flu but reduce...

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How will Western historians in 2050 remember 2020? In scenario 1, "The Great Panic, a lost generation", I sketch my best guess. Scenario 2, "A job well done" is the one I imagine many current Western governments hope is told. Scenario 3, "The dark path of the Great Panic", is...

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[caption id="attachment_34335" align="alignright" width="378"] Dan Andrews said that his 'Road Map' for easing the lockdown is not a doctoral thesis – a proposition that's hard to argue with. Further propositions will be offered at subsequent press conferences.[/caption] Life...

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[message: the "stay at home" firms will see their bored and lonely good young staff jump ship to the hip, drunk, snorting, and cavorting hard-work hard-play offices everyone loves to complain about.] The estimate from Transport for London is that 72% of workers are still not b...

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[caption id="attachment_34242" align="aligncenter" width="2304"] I really love this design by Casey Finley, who was kind enough to allow me to publish it here. He has a very distinctive style which is really coming into its own as he works on it. For instance, see here and her...

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An earlier version of this piece was published last week on the Mandarin . Because the idea I have called “the Evaluator General ” is several ideas knitted together to try to resolve a number of dilemmas, it comes with numerous implications that are often missed or misundersto...

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Note: This post was original published on 6 July 2015; I've updated it several times because both parties keep revisiting a decentralisation agenda. [getty src="587183652" width="509" height="339"] Once again we're hearing the argument that Australia would be a much better pla...

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Are you dismayed at getting 100 emails a day you need to wade through, disturbing your concentration? Does your administration bother you constantly with things you just ‘have to be aware of’? Are you tired of the ‘executive reports’, ‘award notices’, 'compulsory breathing tra...

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Cross posted from the Mandarin There is a huge catch 22 driving impact measurement in human services. A lot of the evaluation is done because governments seek it, but then it goes nowhere – and for good reason. NGOs and others hoping to 'scale-up' innovation can’t escape this...

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Values are observed in actions and choices, and rather less so in words. Competition policy has been applied with great relish to the labour market – at least at the bottom end. (Subject to our relatively generous basic and award wage arrangements). So restrictive practices of...

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https://youtu.be/S_SWo3Cj8Yc Herewith my presentation in London "Economic reform thinking as if we'd bothered to do it" and Martin Wolf's commentary on it beginning at around the 40 minute mark. Judging from audience comments, a good time was had by all. You can download the s...

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The US political establishment is now firmly of the belief that the US is still the world’s dominant superpower, and that they could easily win a cold-war confrontation with China , just like it overwhelmed the Soviet Union with economic firepower. I think the Americans are ba...

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One of the best pieces of scientific news the last decades has been the spectacular improvements in solar energy generation. The current world price was set in 2017 when the Dubai government bought a large future solar contract for 7.3 US cents per Kilowatt Hour, a mere 1/6 th...

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Cross posted from John Menadue's Pearls and Irritations NBN Co claims their ‘focus remains strongly on improving customer experience on the network including a smooth connection to the network.’ In fact the experience is a fiasco. Bill Shorten says the dysfunctional NBN needs...

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All finance requires is an upgrade for the internet age From Nicholas Gruen, VIC, Australia Given the resounding “No” from the Swiss in the Vollgeld or “sovereign money” referendum , and despite Bob Sleeper’s relief ( Letters , June 12), Martin Wolf’s central question remains...

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Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship , by Pierre Azoulay, Benjamin Jones, J. Daniel Kim, Javier Miranda - #24489 (PR) Abstract: Many observers, and many investors, believe that young people are especially likely to produce the most successful new firms. We use administrative d...

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In the engine room of nation states, ie the tax departments, the coming battle with platform providers is taking shape. Uber, airbnb, facebook, linkedin, ebay, jobseek, and a myriad of specialised platform providers facilitate micro-trades that are largely untaxed by the autho...

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[expanded from the post on JohnMenadue] When Bitcoin went public in 2009 it introduced to the world of finance and economics the technology of blockchain. Even the many who thought Bitcoin would never make it as a major currency were intrigued by the BlockChain technology and...

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Sometimes, it feels like 1910 all over again. Then, a confident Germany was the up-and-coming industrial power house, fearing an even more up-and-coming Russia, with the UK and France desperately holding on to their colonial empires. Now, a confident China is the up-and-coming...

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I wrote this piece in the Guardian to keep stirring the pot on post-ideological reform, unaware that I would be outflanked and outgunned on my left by Peter Costello who wants to socialise compulsory super. #Srsly. Which bank could give Australians a better bang for their buck...

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[caption id="attachment_31407" align="aligncenter" width="1035"] It's pretty obvious why this picture came up forth in a Google Image Search of the expression "competitive neutrality" but if you can't figure it out for yourself frankly the Troppo collective are disgusted. We'r...

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Fredrick Hayek was onto something fundamental in stressing the centrality of information flow to economic functioning. But because his consuming passion was on the (undoubted) evils of Soviet-style central planning, 'the market' always figured as the deus ex machina, a kind of...

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[Note to self. Geeks only] Over the fold I muse on the nature of human intelligence, social intelligence, and the options for artificial intelligence to become 'smarter than humans' in the areas of social power and law-making. It is taken for granted that you accept that in ha...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="620"] B1 and B2, or as they're known here at Troppo, T1 and T2 "Are you thinking what I'm thinking T2?"[/caption] The contentious issue of obligatory quotas for commercial children’s television is now under review and has polarised the...

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Leisure Luxuries and the Labor Supply of Young Men by Mark Aguiar, Mark Bils, Kerwin Kofi Charles, Erik Hurst Abstract: Younger men, ages 21 to 30, exhibited a larger decline in work hours over the last fifteen years than older men or women. Since 2004, time-use data show that...

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[getty src="527045000" width="508" height="339"] My latest column for The CEO Magazine looks at how the automation deal is breaking down . Normally the deal in modern economies is that we accept that technological change and automation will screw up a bunch of people's lives,...

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This evening I received a highly significant email. It's from National Archives with which I'm doing some minor business. I have no idea what it means, but I figure it could be of considerable use to someone. If that person is you, I commend it to you. It's certainly a relief...

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[caption id="attachment_30174" align="alignleft" width="600"] Melbourne from the Yarra[/caption] My latest column for The CEO Magazine extends my updated Troppo post on decentralisation . As I dug further into the issue for this column, I was startled by the extent to which go...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMLt7bSX3iE I In writing a series of essays last year I came to an obvious conclusion. It's perhaps one that others had come to years ago, but then there's something in coming to a conclusion from a position sympathetic to its opposite.[1. As J....

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An incomplete series of thoughts beginning with a couple of paragraphs suggesting something with grander aspirations - which of course may be realised some day - but not in this blog post. Still I'm heading overseas now, and I'm not sure how the aspirations can be realised, so...

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One of the central contemporary critiques of the industrial revolution was its undermining of crafts and craftsmanship. Today this is happening within the world of ideas. And at least right now, it's looking like this is not a very happy development. This was brought home to m...

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This essay is the third of three starting with my essay on the Evaluator General in two parts followed by an essay responding to the Productivity Commission's inquiry into competition in human services. Part One A couple of days ago I came upon care ethics via Virginia Held's...

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I've been arguing that our current approach to efficient regulation is blockheaded for as long as I can remember. I've even pointed out how one might possibly do quite a lot better with a less ideologically Manichean approach in which regulatory policy is a battle between Good...

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I'm pleased to see Jason Potts tweeting "Blogs are still a thing. This one I just came across is the thingest. It's like @slatestarcodex, but for econ & tech artir.wordpress.com". As a result of tweeting back my 2009 post on Blogging the crisis , I re-read it. Sometimes I'm su...

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Sanjiv Erat1, Uri Gneezy1 We investigate whether piece-rate and competitive incentives affect creativity, and if so, how the incentive effect depends on the form of the incentives. We find that while both piece-rate and competitive incentives lead to greater effort relative to...

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From a quick squiz at their report, the PC seems to have done an excellent job on the question of IP. It didn't put too much effort distorting its recommendations to somehow second guess what was politically palatable and just set out the appropriate principles and their upsho...

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Part Two of my essay on the way of looking at the world I've worked out over the last few years and published on Evonomics can be found here . So many years, so few words :( Part one of this essay showed how two dimensions of free riding define what we call “public goods” – th...

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Lateral Economics has had occasion to compile a list of free, freemium and cheap services to help run your one person micro or several person small business. I post it here for your interest and because it may be useful to you. The latest service I discovered to my delight was...

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Cross posted at The Mandarin In the first part of this essay , I elaborated on evidence-based policymaking and service delivery, pointing to all manner of pathologies that must be dealt with to deliver something effective. The way in which KPIs distort reporting and can perver...

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Here's the first of a two part essay on evidence based policy published today in the Mandarin . This part is a slightly gussied up version of a Troppo post from a month ago . The long-awaited second part will follow. Calling for policy to be more ‘‘evidence-based” rolls off th...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNfGyIW7aHM From BCG's latest set of instructions : In grappling with organization design, company executives tend to draw on two venerable approaches, which can be characterized as the “hard” approach and the “soft” approach. . . . Both approac...

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Following innovations in the UK and New Zealand, some of Australia's more forward looking State governments are looking at two related innovations. The first is 'social investment' with social impact bonds leading the vanguard. Social impact bonds As Wikipedia tells us, a soci...

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Last night I attended the launch of Creative State which was the culmination of over a year of engagement between the Victorian Government and the arts community. It involved a taskforce or some such and an Expert Reference Group - on which I sat. Anyway the Minister was very...

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Below the introduction to a piece in The Mandarin today . We shoot the breeze about who’ll win the next election or footy match. Virtually none of it helps predict the future. But we’re driven on … as if somehow it will. We do it with the economy. People ask economists how the...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="400"] A stupid diagram - the kind of thing we can't get enough of here at ClubTroppo. And remember "Reflect, revise and Improve". That's RRI - capiche?. In short, you can't get enough RRI. In fact you should be doing it now! Reflect, Re...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo2cP0j5lYk Your correspondent was once very rude about one of Australia's better institutions though now rather complacent - the Reserve Bank - pointing out in 2012 that making it's most important decisions (to set the overnight cash rate) each...

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This post began as a comment on Paul's last comment on my "Mainstream Radical Centrists: Where are they? " column. Paul boiled down his response to this: If you want to have a serious debate about reforms, go to countries that are hurting and that see the need for it. Like the...

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Australia's 'economic miracle' off the back of what might be called the 'reform period' which can be dated fairly neatly from late 1983 and the floating of the dollar to mid 2001 (which, IIRC was the date the ANTS tax reform package was introduced). It came about because peopl...

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I was at a PC function yesterday on 'disruptive technology' and said, in a rather crabby way, that I'd been talking about the significance of informing consumers about the quality of products for a long, long time and now, it's only when people can actually see Uber and Airbnb...

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Disruptive Change in the Taxi Business: The Case of Uber Abstract In most cities, the taxi industry is highly regulated and utilizes technology developed in the 1940s. Ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, which use modern internet-based mobile technology to connect pas...

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Peter Shergold's report on learning from mistakes is out. It advises on how to avoid the mistakes of the Pink Batts fiasco (He was asked to do this by a government that, pretty obviously, wasn't the slightest bit interested in learning from its or anyone else's mistakes. I exp...

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This is commonsense, but fortunately less crude economic methodology than has been pursued hitherto seems to be uncovering it: Abstract : A strong tradition in economic history, which primarily relies on qualitative evidence and statistical correlations, has emphasized the imp...

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My forward to Deloitte's second report on digital money - The future of exchanging value: Cryptocurrencies and the trust economy. Exchanging value Ice becomes water when warmed. Only familiarity prevents us from marvelling at the mysteriousness of this ‘phase change’, as physi...

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As I've argued elsewhere, most public debates on policy - and I suspect on pretty much everything else - tend to take place as culture wars. In a culture war the 'sides' are well defined - usually mapping pretty well onto 'left' and 'right' terrain. The identities of the vario...

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When Adam Smith said that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public" I read that statement broadly. He clearly intended to refer to business people seeking to monopolise the ma...

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With the Internet being a regular feature of our lives for about 20 years now, what have been the related developments that were hard to pick at the outset? What are the lessons? Five thoughts: Communication and personal expression is the main business of the Internet. That wa...

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Who knew that Alfred Marshall published an essay entitled "The Social Possibilities of Economic Chivalry" (1907) (pdf)? I didn't until I came upon it the other day. Having now read it, it's thoroughly Marshallian - very much of a piece with his dissenting meliorism which I dis...

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The Impact of R&D Subsidy on Innovation: a Study of New Zealand Firms by Adam B. Jaffe, Trinh Le - #21479 (PR) Abstract: This paper examines the impact of government assistance through R&D grants on innovation output for firms in New Zealand. Using a large database that links...

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https://vimeo.com/136778702 Above is a panel discussion on the sharing economy with Jim Minifie, Ian Harper and me. There was a lot of good feedback on it after the event, so I was pleased to see it up on the Grattan website.

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https://youtu.be/zs7XEEbQl_s In July last year I gave a talk to a Bitcoin conference and was whisked away (as one sometimes is) to give an interview that would be chopped up into 'grabs' for a doco on bitcoin. The 'uncut' interview (it's lightly cut, not uncut, but it's the fe...

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Vint Cerf is a serious guy or so I thought I was entitled to believe - he's one of the early architects of the internet. Anyway, with David Nordfors he's disrupting unemployment . How? He's got this amazing idea for an internet platform to match people who want to work with pe...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVAmGArS0tU The Overton Window is a quite well known expression describing the demarcation between political/policy discussion that is and is not acceptable in mainstream discussion. Sometimes what removes your idea from the window is that, what...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hN6HfGUGQBc If you think TroppoLabs is mainly about keeping the Merc Sports and Rooter in basic working order, think again!

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I drove for the best part of 11 hours over the last few days giving a Do Lecture (would you believe?) which was fun. In any event I listened to some seriously great radio. Inside the drug court I was riveted by three 50 minute docos on the NSW Drug Court. It really is a traged...

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Oh well I guess snark can be justified as necessary to keeping standards above some rock bottom. Anyway, I did wonder whether this article on the Renaissance and innovation was the silliest thing written on either. Even ignoring the fact that he is about half a millennium out...

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Monday's column in the Fin published as "Debate should be on best-use, not ownership of public data" Data is in the news but we’re still working out how to think about it. Ladies and Gentlemen, we’ve got the Wrong Metaphor. Let me explain. There’s endless argy-bargy about who...

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Here's yesterday's op ed for the Fin published as Technology education is about more than funding : STEM is all the rage in education – that’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Part culture war against Australian mediocrity, part cargo cult, a principal goal is more...

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As readers will know, I've been a fan of the way in which the internet generates reputational information which greatly improves the efficiency of markets. Still it's surprising how tricky these things are, something I've been pondering while using Airbnb for quite a few stays...

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[O]n the behavioral side, clearly people aren’t perfectly rational — but there are lots of ways to be slightly stupid, and it’s very hard to come up with a general theory about which of these ways they will choose in any given situation. Behavioral economics is a fine thing, b...

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Source OECD .

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An Englishman enters a naval action with the firm conviction that his duty is to hurt his enemies and help his friends and allies without looking out for directions in the midst of the fight; and while he thus clears his mind of all subsidiary distractions, he rests in confide...

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This post is mostly a note to self: Like I keep saying, there's an ecology between public and private goods. This article asks whether smartphones should be used in meetings. That's a question about a cultural rule. It's a public good question. The article however seeks the an...

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The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of f...

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This paper is pretty interesting. The last generation has seen the triumph of the baby boomers in attracting resources to themselves, at the cost of other generations, most obviously illustrated in throwing off the shackles of university fees (so other generations and the uned...

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Below the fold is the Ockham's Razor lecture that went to air yesterday. Since the trolls have already come out in force on the ABC thread (The ABC's illustration doesn't help!), I've reproduced it for your delectation below. Nicholas Gruen: Both popular commonsense and econom...

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‘Nor is wisdom only concerned with universals: to be wise, one must also be familiar with the particular, since wisdom has to do with action, and the sphere of action is constituted by particulars’. Aristotle [caption id="attachment_31744" align="alignright" width="387"] Looki...

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By the time economic reform matured as a political project – let’s date it from Paul Keating’s announcement about its popularity with the resident galah in every pet shop – it was already on the slide into the kind of ideological formula of mercantilism that Ken Henry so power...

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Well gentle readers, it's come to this. Scottish independence is going down to the wire. It is hanging by a thread, though if you are concerned that I am mixing my metaphors, I think you're flogging a dead horse after it's bolted. In any event, in the question of Scottish inde...

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On Tuesday I gave a talk to a Queensland Public Service Conference. The Conference is quite a production. It's a regular annual fixture and makes a good profit. Over 500 people attend and they take the opportunity to fund some excellent speakers. Dominic Campbell who founded F...

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Delivered for your amusement - if not necessarily mine: :) This conversation took around 15 minutes as I was working on other things. Thank you for choosing Optus. Please wait for a site operator to respond. Optus has a privacy policy, please let your consultant know if you wo...

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In case anyone's interested I did an interview on ‘my trip’ overseas recently which if you fancy a bit of light and slightly educational entertainment is here . Anyway, the main burden of my remarks is that we’re losing ground within the leaders group on eGov and Government 2....

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In case anyone's interested, I did an interview on "My Trip" which can be downloaded from this link .

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Simon Heffer's High Minds presents us with a portrait of the mid-Victorians in which they consciously set about building the world which became ours. A liberal democratic world. To do so they recognised the need for all sorts of public goods. Those of education and health sure...

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Patents and Cumulative Innovation: Causal Evidence from the Courts by Alberto Galasso, Mark Schankerman - #20269 (IO PR) Cumulative innovation is central to economic growth. Do patent rights facilitate or impede follow-on innovation? We study the causal effect of removing pate...

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From a recent column for the AFR . The report can be downloaded here . Earlier this year our Treasurer, Joe Hockey, led the G20 Finance Ministers to pledge lifting GDP by 2 percent over ‘business as usual’ over the next five years. It’s a big win for the Treasurer, but how can...

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Human Capital and Industrialization: Evidence from the Age of Enlightenment by Mara P. Squicciarini, Nico Voigtlaender - #20219 (DAE EFG) Abstract: While human capital is a strong predictor of economic development today, its importance for the Industrial Revolution is typicall...

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[caption id="" align="alignright" width="397"] Life is miserable: run, run, run[/caption] I've always been struck by how we debate flexibility in the labour market without paying attention to the other problem in the labour market which is that it's extremely difficult to find...

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Book Translations as Idea Flows: The Effects of the Collapse of Communism on the Diffusion of Knowledge by Ran Abramitzky, Isabelle Sin Abstract: We use book translations as a new measure of international idea flows and study the effects of Communism's collapse in Eastern Euro...

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Pretty interesting paper (pdf). The abstract: We examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, we begin by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier....

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Relaxing Occupational Licensing Requirements: Analyzing Wages and Prices for a Medical Service by Morris M. Kleiner, Allison Marier, Kyoung Won Park, Coady Wing Abstract: Occupational licensing laws have been relaxed in a large number of U.S. states to give nurse practitioners...

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It may not prove much, or rather it proves the obvious - that stuff that makes its way between two pieces of land tends to take place over the sea - but it's kind of fun.

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Abstract: This paper argues that openness to new, unconventional and disruptive ideas has a first-order impact on creative innovations-innovations that break new ground in terms of knowledge creation. After presenting a motivating model focusing on the choice between increment...

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Dear Nokia, I hear you have fallen on hard times. I have two product suggestions: 1. Make a mobile that is purely a telephone 2. Make a phone in the shape of a pen The two could well be combined. 1. Pure phone There are countless millions of older people who would appreciate a...

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http://vimeo.com/75482401 Here's a presentation I gave to a conference called - unhelpfully - Art for Art's Sake. It was actually about new approaches to participation in the arts, about finding ways of connecting people to the arts - and the arts to people - which go beyond t...

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I'm doing some research for a talk I'm giving in New Zealand to heads of private schools - the invitation for which came from a similar talk I gave to the Australian Heads of Independent Schools Association. I'm sruiking the wonders of education 2.0 about which I've waxed and...

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I wrote a good while ago about the economics of doing well by doing good on the internet and when I received a curious email from someone with whom I was conducting a correspondence I decided to write the column below. I've just tried to find it on Google, and it seems I didn'...

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http://youtu.be/Lzi4o6cXilo Attentive Troppodillians will be aware of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation which I chair. After looking awfully like our 'runway' was coming to an end (as we stay in startup land) our first and still flagship program is growing strongly ....

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Today's column in the Age and SMH Public private partnerships (PPPs) haven't been such a happy experiment. Using private money to build arterial roads just increases their cost because private capital requires much higher returns than government borrowing. But I've long wonder...

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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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This is an email I received earlier today from Karen Mahlab - and I offered to reproduce it here for the delectation and contribution of Troppodillians everywhere. The winner of the competition will be flown steerage to London for a weekend at Buckingham Palace with the royal...

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Get a load of the UK Cabinet Office Minister's delivery. http://youtu.be/o-m6l4keQc8 It's fabulously low key, informal, indeed intimate compared with the formal bullshitting mode of almost all political utterance, and straightforward. It is of course 'spin', as it couldn't be...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YabrOlqiQng&feature=plcp Though it goes against my contrarian grain, I'm a huge fan of Steve Jobs. (Call it contrarianism squared). This is a relatively new malady which has been produced by watching quite a few videos of him and reading a bit ab...

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In physics we're used to the idea that at different scales and at different stages of some process, very different things happen. We inhabit Newton's world of medium sized things and speeds - planets, trees, footballs and travel at walking, driving or flying speed - even space...

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I've been talking about this kind of stuff for a fair while in presentations and intimated similar things in some longer pieces and a column or two on Adam Smith and Web 2.0, but I've not done a column on Web 2.0 as public goods privately built. But I have now . THERE'S a revo...

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My daughter alerted me to this very cute video of little kids in the US and their comprehension of the election. "There's the 'white house' and the 'black house'. . . " It's worth watching just for a bit of diversion. But I couldn't embed it so have just copied a still from it...

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Both economic pedagogy and broad political discussion are based on what I've come to think of as anorectic understanding of public and private goods - which boils down to the idea that for things to go on well (let's say in an economy) you need a mix of public and private good...

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https://youtu.be/x6f4ZB2xnF8 (Four minutes of extracts from a 27 minute video which can be watched here .) Here's today's column from the Age and SMH . MASS production and professionalised services built modern prosperity. But in welfare their legacy provides one of the great...

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You're looking at two Segues ® converted by Marathon Targets in Sydney into a moving target for the training of our military. The input segues cost a few thousand and after Marathon Targets have armour plated the moving parts, and built software and various controls to turn th...

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This NYT article highlights something I've long gone on about - the serendipity of information. Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan stared at a printout of gene sequences from a man with cancer , a subject in one of his studies. There, along with the man’s cancer genes, was something unexpect...

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Today's column is pretty self-explanatory. I would have liked to say a fair bit more about the system and how it works, but there's a haiku like pleasure in getting it down to 800 words (OK well, that's not haiku, but you get my meaning). Here it is: I FIRST came upon the rema...

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Part one of a intermittent series on interesting ideas that might not be useful. Today I'm talking about path dependence that leaves us with second rate technology. The hypothesis is very simple, but very interesting. A society has a problem, and a number of technologies becom...

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[slideshare id=4858111&doc=ourfuturelibrary3-100728100555-phpapp02] Tim O'Reilly proposed the slogan "Government as a platform" for his Government 2.0 activities which he's heavily scaled back in favour of more lucrative opportunities. But there was always a problem. That prob...

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What a load of old sensationalist nonsense. I'm seriously starting to worry about Giz. If I want to search anonymously there is a thing called an anonymous tab. And I don't log into my Google account outside work because why would I? - My phone is logged in. That's how the fir...

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https://youtu.be/x6f4ZB2xnF8 (Four minutes of extracts from a 27 minute video which can be watched here .) Herewith my column for the SMH and Age in Ross Gittins' spot while he's on vacation. It's the column of the essay which is here . As he was wheeled around on the emergenc...

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Restructuring and productivity growth in uk manufacturing We analyse productivity growth in UK manufacturing 1980-92 using the newly available ARD panel of establishments drawn from the Census of Production. We examine the contribution to productivity growth of 'internal' rest...

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Ross Gittins asked me if I'd fill in for him during his summer break, which gives me a chance to get a few things off my chest. So here's the first of four weekly columns. In 2009, I chaired the federal government's Government 2.0 Taskforce. We sketched out how government migh...

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Looks like they work . . . Inducement Prizes and Innovation. Date: 2011-12-15 By: Brunt, Liam (Dept. of Economics, Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration) Lerner, Josh (Harvard Business School) Nicholas, Tom (Harvard Business School) http://d.repec.org/n?u=R...

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