Club Troppo

Just had to put this up here, because it's wonderful: [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZnBNuqqz5g[/embed] These people were waiting for a Green Day concert when Bohemian Rhapsody started playing over the speakers ...

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My latest column at The CEO Magazine asks whether Australia's 3.3 per cent minimum wage increase will cause any job losses . It focuses on a few pieces of research, including a new study of Seattle's minimum wage hike, older work by ALP frontbencher Andrew Leigh, and one of ec...

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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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Have you ever reflected on what a strange concept the notion of a 'cause of death' really is? We use the term so often that it wouldn't quickly register as a cultural oddity, but it really is a quirky beast and has an odd history. I have a bit of a professional interest in thi...

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Until yesterday I had never heard of Trevor Phillips. He is a former chairman of the UK's Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which means he was in charge of enforcing British anti-discrimination laws in the Blair years. The documentary below is one of the more intere...

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The Effect of Cash Injections: Evidence from the 1980s Farm Debt Crisis by Nittai K. Bergman, Rajkamal Iyer, Richard T. Thakor Abstract: What is the effect of cash injections during financial crises? Exploiting county-level variation arising from random weather shocks during t...

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Beetles: Biased Promotions and Persistence of False Belief by George Akerlof, Pascal Michaillat - #23523 (LS PR) Abstract: This paper develops a theory of promotion based on evaluations by the already promoted. The already promoted show some favoritism toward candidates for pr...

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High School Genetic Diversity and Later-life Student Outcomes: Micro-level Evidence from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study by C. Justin Cook, Jason M. Fletcher - #23520 (EFG LS) Abstract: A novel hypothesis posits that levels of genetic diversity in a population may partially e...

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Right-to-Carry Laws and Violent Crime: A Comprehensive Assessment Using Panel Data and a State-Level Synthetic Controls Analysis by John J. Donohue, Abhay Aneja, Kyle D. Weber - #23510 (LE) Abstract: The 2004 report of the National Research Council (NRC) on Firearms and Violen...

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzvOjcGifOM&t=12s&spfreload=10 My 60th Birthday party was a blast. So as not to wait another decade till the next one, I thought I’d do it annually. But to disguise the naked egotism of it I decided to raise money for a Good Cause. And the cause...

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[getty src="622166468" width="594" height="396"] What are the effects of having a US president who is diminished in stature and yet not facing imminent job loss? I try to think this through in my latest column for The CEO Magazine . One likely result: less stability in US fore...

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From Revisionist History In the middle of Los Angeles — a city with some of the most expensive real estate in the world — there are a half a dozen exclusive golf courses, massive expanses dedicated to the pleasure of a privileged few. How do private country clubs afford the pr...

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Working out why the Australian economy has left New Zealand's in the dust for the last thirty years is a bit tricky. I've had a go at it on this blog once before. Anyway, now New Zealand is coming back into fashion. They've certainly followed Charlie Munger's advice and tried...

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https://www.youtube.com/embed/s2Ybgtc7XA4 Last night I came off a series of deadlines and sat in my chair, catching up on a backlog of emails. I also watched David Stratton's series on David Stratton with some Australian Movies worked into it currently on iView (episode 2) whi...

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[getty src="171148424" width="498" height="344"] My column last week for The CEO Magazine reiterates a point made previously at Troppo : the weight of research shows decisively that high marginal tax rates have little effect on the efforts of most high-income earners. Sample q...

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[caption id="attachment_30732" align="alignright" width="373"] What is this picture doing here? It is one of the images selected by Google when I typed in "now is the time for complacency". It clearly has a deep connection with that idea. I can't comment further except to say...

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In the comments section of my earlier post about hatred of the banks , John Walker (no relation) asked: If the big four did pass on the tax to their customers, do you think the ‘non big four’ banks, building societies etc would grab the chance to be more competitive or grab th...

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Via Andrew Gelman's site , here's a TED talk by US philanthropist Laura Arnold entitled "The Four Most Dangerous Words? A New Study Shows". It details her journey through the world of social, medical, psychological and other research. It's a lively and concise summary of the d...

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And the Children Shall Lead: Gender Diversity and Performance in Venture Capital by Paul A. Gompers, Sophie Q. Wang Abstract: With an overall lack of gender and ethnic diversity in the innovation sector documented in Gompers and Wang (2017), we ask the natural next question: D...

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="659"] Cognitive biases: Choose your poison[/caption] Cross posted from the Mandarin . Introduction Strategy is crucial for organisations. But as I've previously argued , a great deal of what passes for strategic thinking is a kind of a...

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