Club Troppo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_7h0TzqFA8 I'm a big fan of Colin Hay, whom I saw on stage for the first time about three years ago. Hilariously funny and great songs. I particularly like "It's a beautiful world". The video above is a good clip showing how funny he is. It's i...

Continue reading →

The Gunner Labor government came to office last August promising to restore the trust of Territorians in government, after it had been shattered by four years of chaos, division and dubious or worse ethical behaviour by various members of the Giles CLP regime. Enacting and boo...

Continue reading →

I've always thought that, if there's an economic driver for Australian culture it's the high demand for labour - exceeding supply a lot of the time - that applied in Australia from the convict period on and the resulting uppityness of workers - including convict workers judgin...

Continue reading →

Handle with Care: The Local Air Pollution Costs of Coal Storage . by Akshaya Jha, Nicholas Z. Muller - #23417 (EEE PE) Abstract: Burning coal is known to have environmental costs; this paper quantities the local environmental costs of transporting and storing coal at U.S. powe...

Continue reading →

Status Goods: Experimental Evidence from Platinum Credit Cards by Leonardo Bursztyn, Bruno Ferman, Stefano Fiorin, Martin Kanz, Gautam Rao - #23414 (DEV LS PE) Abstract: This paper provides novel field-experimental evidence on status goods. We work with an Indonesian bank that...

Continue reading →

Below is a spirited exchange between me and Barry Jones on deliberative democracy which I reproduce with his permission. He won't be participating in any online debate because as he puts it I … confess to being a total abstainer where social media is concerned. I don’t want to...

Continue reading →

[getty src="483245425" width="507" height="338"] With airport rail links in the news in both Sydney and Melbourne, here's my recent column for The CEO Magazine arguing that most transport systems have higher priorities . Most people seem to love the idea of airport rail links....

Continue reading →

There's a lot I don't understand. We don't have enough space of a proper survey but let me give you an example. Pistachios taste better than hazelnuts. Much better. And yet hazelnut ice cream and gelato are much much yummier than their pistachio equivalents. As I recall someon...

Continue reading →

The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms by David Autor, David Dorn, Lawrence F. Katz, Christina Patterson, John Van Reenen - #23396 (LS PR) Abstract: The fall of labor's share of GDP in the United States and many other countries in recent decades is well do...

Continue reading →

Up from Slavery? African American Intergenerational Economic Mobility Since 1880 by William J. Collins, Marianne H. Wanamaker - #23395 (DAE LS) Abstract: We document the intergenerational mobility of black and white American men from 1880 through 2000 by building new datasets...

Continue reading →

My latest column for The CEO Magazine sees Scott Morrison enjoying his move to the political centre via the new bank levy . I still haven't worked out whether this particular $1.5 billion a year bank liabilities tax is actually good policy. But it has at least some policy just...

Continue reading →

And yes, if you've not seen it, Annie Hall really is that good. It's a four and a half from me. Festival Website | Films | Schedule Top Picks 20th Century Women (Opening Night) Dorothea is mother to Jamie and he’s growing up fast. It’s a challenging time and Dorothea decides s...

Continue reading →

A long time ago I ran Windows 98 and at least every 24 hours, though often more often I had to cold reboot it to make it work properly. Now, nearly twenty years after this was largely fixed in the Windows world, I have the same problem with my MacBook Air. I bought a new one a...

Continue reading →

One of the privileges of access to what we cool kids call the "back end" of Troppo is that when I write a long, long comment , in an old thread that has taken a new direction, I can make it the start of a new thread. As I'm doing here. Note that the comment originally arose fr...

Continue reading →

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="490"] Rene Descartes eat your heart out: The diagram that changed the world.[/caption] A friend wondered aloud on Facebook what I thought of Doughnut economics pointing me to this article by George Monbiot. My reply is reproduced below,...

Continue reading →

An essay prompted by a friend recommending James' essay I think largely for its defence of Menzies as worthy of more respect he's been given by the left - which is a fair point. Cross posted from The Mandarin , which, to my surprise was interested in picking it up. In my view...

Continue reading →

An Economic Approach to Alleviate the Crises of Confidence in Science: With an Application to the Public Goods Game by Luigi Butera, John A. List - #23335 (PE) Novel empirical insights by their very nature tend to be unanticipated, and in some cases at odds with the current st...

Continue reading →

The OECD is getting pretty serious about bridging divides - you know righting the world's injustices - that kind of thing. It's making a difference. It's probably thinking to itself "there's got to be change" - or thoughts to that effect. Why they even have a conference themed...

Continue reading →

Answer given on or about Sunday. Now available in comments

Continue reading →

Some of you will have seen my article in the Saturday Paper. I can only tease you with 150 words from it here. Then you'll need to read it on the Saturday Paper's site. As the financial crisis continued wreaking its havoc in late 2010, Mervyn King, who, as Governor of the Bank...

Continue reading →