Club Troppo

Well maybe not, but this review of what sounds like a great book is a great read. The book is The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. The author of the book is Paul Collier and the author of the review of it is Niall Fergusson....

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Last weekend Bruce Chapman sent me another of his little bits of econometrics about Don Bradman. Bruce calcualted how much the Don increased gate takings and concluded that the ACB got a pretty good deal when he batted! In any event, with due acknowledgement, here is Bruce's l...

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In an obvious bid for some inter-thread Missing Link stoushing, Amanda has decided to do her arts review as a series of links (or, alternatively - and more likely - I have seriously screwed something up). We are also down on some personnel, with Ken Parish still snowed under a...

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It's a good question which the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) had the good sense to ask Lateral Economics. You can take in our answer to the question in under 700 words as they appear in the Fin Review today, or at much greater length in the report we did...

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Another fascinating insight into the current Iraq counter insurgency strategy by Lt. Col. David Kilcullen. Reading this you can't help thinking that maybe - finally- they've got the right people on the job.

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Here's an early review of the iPhone . I'm not actually a fan of the iPod though it's amazing how large its market share is in a market in which it doesn't have many strong natural monopoly advantages - just 'first mover' advantages. It doesn't record radio so I buy other mach...

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First up, some housekeeping. The Missing Link crew have added a new committee member, and we'd like y'all to welcome Legal Eagle to the fold. For those of you who've been following this illustrious publication, you'd know that Legal Eagle is a young mum, legal academic and (fo...

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Every picture tells a story ... As a former Northern Territory public servant who spent over 20 years dealing with policy development and program management in a range of fields relating to Indigenous people, I wont dwell on my anger at the way the Brough/Howard plan was annou...

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The graph is from the ABS' population statistics from June 2006 . Queensland and Tasmania are the only ones that people are migrating too on a positive basis and Tasmania barely so. The migration to Queensland is mainly Novacumbrians where 289,000 moved to Queensland between 2...

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This post is exclusively for anyone who saw The Lives of Others , which I finally got around to seeing. If you haven't seen it, you won't know what I'm talking about; and what you do understand will spoil it for you anyway. I enjoyed it enormously, for all the reasons other di...

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I am prepared to give John Howard the benefit of the doubt on his Northern Territory intervention. If, over time, it reduces alcohol and drugs and child abuse (whether as a direct result of the federal intervention or indirectly by stirring the States into more vigorous action...

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Holden reports a 120 million loss . Ouch: Despite the Commodore maintaining its position as the number one selling vehicle down under in 2006, total revenues were down 7.8% over the period, which meant that Holden ended up with a substantial $123.7 million loss. That is about...

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The Journal of Economic Perspectives calls this a 'discussion starter'. Barun Mitra discusses Saving the Tiger: China and India Move in Radically Different Directions. Since the 1970s, India has enacted tough laws and mobilized huge resources to stop hunting and trading in tig...

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Continuing the occasional series of 'why oh why' here is a Microsoft edition. Way back in 1997 Microsoft put out Outlook 97 which was a pretty natty program. It wasn't an act of genius but it was a good program that integrated a calendar and an email client in a useful package...

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In recent weeks on clubtroppo and elsewhere, there's been a lot of attention given to untruthful journalism, media bias , and lying politicians . The situation appears the same internationally, with Blair and Bush being criticised for lying about Iraq and media bias being more...

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Well, after my R v Hurley -imposed-hiatus, I'm back (thank Christ). Once again bringing the best of the blogosphere to you via the redoubtable Missing Link crew (if I ever make enough money, I'll be commissioning Hilltop Hoods to write us a theme song). I could have done witho...

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I'll be interested to see what fallout there is from last night's Media Watch story on Alan Kohler . The topic for the week was the outsourcing of expert financial news and commentary on TV. In the case of commercial networks, it seems they have actually been paying getting pa...

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Mr Howard's new plan for NT indigenous communities, announced on Thursday, has overwhelmed other topics of debate on Australian political blogs. The question: has the PM finally summoned up the New Tampa his opponents have been expecting? tigtog thinks so , except that: Unlike...

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You might recall a few months back during both the Victorian and New South Wales State elections, when Opposition Leaders Ted Baillieu and Peter Debnam were parading around in Speedos in the lead up to their campaigns, that they were widely mocked for scaring the children and...

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Welcome anyone who's arrived here since listening to Radio National. For others, you may be interested in a discussion on blogging on Radio National this morning . I prompted it by emailing Geraldine Doogue suggesting that she consider doing a regular weekly or monthly 'around...

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