Club Troppo

In addition to Chris Lloyd's contribution below, several other bloggers have already published posts on last week's Federal Court decision ( Larrikin Music Publishing Pty Ltd v EMI Songs Australia Pty Limited ) about copyright breach in Men at Work's iconic pop anthem "Down Un...

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In 1934 an Aussie school teacher wrote a little ditty about Kookaburras that was enjoyed and sung by school kids for decades. She made pretty much no money out of it all, as it was, and is, still legal for kids to sing a song at school without paying the composer, thank the lo...

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Ever since I read his marvellous The Truth about Markets I've been a fan of John Kay - an economist who doesn't like to get too far away from reality. He's also not a zealot for any particular view of the world, except that pathetic kind of vagueness and pluralism to which I a...

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The global warming debate has morphed into Mondo Bizzaro. Rudd is capable of mounting a succinct and persuasive explanation of his emissions trading scheme but chooses not to do so, preferring to shift the electoral focus to subjects the pollsters tell him are more unequivocal...

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While we're waiting for Ken's dissertation on the ethics of forcing minors to watch the Prime Minister's appearance on qanda , here are a few comments on the program itself. [Update: more from Mark Bahnisch ] Kevin Rudd and Tony Jones looked like twins, both prematurely white,...

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Remember me? That grumpy old bloke who once obsessively spewed forth half-baked opinions here at Troppo? After being AWOL for some time a comeback of sorts seems imminent. I'm experiencing fitful urges to post, usually on very silly topics like whether Jen may have committed r...

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It is relatively easy for economists to debate efficiency issues e.g. when we discuss privatisation. But when we are discussing a host of particular economic issues - such as the distribution effects of labour market deregulation, or the role of health care, or the role of inv...

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The February edition of The Monthly is out, including Robert Manne's eagerly-awaited 'Comment' on Windschuttle . Windschuttle attacked Manne in January's Quadrant , saying that he should stand down from his position at La Trobe, then on Monday went on ABC radio's Counterpoint...

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I have been arguing here that America is different to other countries, and in particular that the right wing party (one can hardly call it conservative) is different. Here's some hard evidence. It is as Markos Moulitsas says, tragic. These are the attitudes of self identified...

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Serving it up to the hyperconnected generation I read The Dumbest Generation over Christmas, though it came out in 2008. It's a very satisfying polemic, as well as thoroughly researched -- to the extent that I'm competent to judge -- and its author Mark Bauerlein is a cut abov...

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William Hardy Wilson is a fairly well regarded Australian architect of the 20th century and is such usually afforded a few paragraphs in biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias. These will mention in passing a few well regarded buildings and pay brief mention to an unreal...

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The headlines all warn that core inflation "remains high" and that the futures market is predicting a 78% chance that the RBA will increase rates next week. We need to keep things in perspective. First, after three annual increases in interest rates and with the gradual easing...

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Google removes Aboriginal flag from winning Doodle 4 Google entry Last year 11 year old Jessie Du won Google's Doodle 4 Google competition with her entry 'Australia Forever'. Displayed on Google's homepage for Australia Day, the doodle features Australian animals formed into t...

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Two apparently unrelated articles by superstars of the 1980s and 90s in their respective fields which share a common theme - the market's aversion to serious innovation, it's tendency to move incrementally towards lower levels of innovation leaving really fundamental and specu...

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One thing I've been at pains to stress is that Web 2.0 platforms - like Wikipedia, Blogger, Google Search, Google Calendar, Facebook - are public goods. Further, although a core function of government is to build public goods, none of these public goods were built by governmen...

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As we lurch from one disaster to another, I think Mark Thoma quoting Chris Blattman, hopping into David Brooks gets it exactly right. Chris Blattman: David Brooks saves the world in 1000 words, by Chris Blattman : Haiti, like most of the worlds poorest nations, suffers from a...

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In the first post in this series I talked about recent empirical work on institutions and development and the problems I had with the use of constructed indices for measuring institutions. In the second post I talked about a particular paper I decided to retest and the alterna...

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Down here in Victoria (well I'm not there right now but will return in late Jan) things have turned nasty as the Indian Government keeps pointing out when we kill another Indian. I'm not as concerned as some other people as to whether it's racially based violence. It's violenc...

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Today Artworks is replaying a program from May on Erwin Fabian - possibly the oldest surviving Dunera boy who continues to sculpt every day in his studio in North Melbourne. I have posted on him a few times before . I teed up an oral history project to record Erwin's recollect...

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In the second of what is turning into a great series of posts Richard Green has been discussing economic methodology with a bunch of us, most particularly Paul Frijters. In the last post Richard says this: The 1st generation of work will come up with a mess of concepts. The se...

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