Club Troppo

Bowling for Fascism: Social Capital and the Rise of the Nazi Party in Weimar Germany, 1919-33 by Shanker Satyanath, Nico Voigtlaender, Hans-Joachim Voth - #19201 (DAE POL) Abstract: Social capital - a dense network of associations facilitating cooperation within a community -...

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Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies th...

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The Muslim brotherhood in Egypt is currently feeling the full force of the repression apparatus of the military and economic elite. Sad to say, but the torture chambers will be busy at this very moment, demoralising the elected government and its core supporters. A sad week. I...

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I first got to know Tom Watson. OK I've never met him but we've corresponded when he'd just resigned as a Minister in Gordon Brown's Government doing many things to promote open government and I was doing the government 2.0 Taskforce. In any event, I've marvelled at Tom's morp...

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Greetings from Washington where we did two launches on 'An Economic Theory of Greed, Love, Groups and Networks' . The launches went very well, thanks for asking. Due to its success, the book has gone kindle. I was just alerted to the video that UNSW put out on a discussion we...

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Cooperation under Democracy and Authoritarian Norms By: Björn Vollan, Yexin Zhou, Andreas Landmann, Biliang Hu, Carsten Herrmann-Pillath There is ample evidence for a “democracy premium”. Laws that have been implemented via election lead to a more cooperative behavior compared...

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Behind the contrived fluoro-jacketed appearances at workplaces, behind the simplistic sloganeering, is someone with a far more considered view of the world than his critics suppose. Abbott is comprehensible, but only on his own terms. You don’t have to like those terms, but it...

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Iwrote a report, much as set out in Part 1 , and sent it to the WA Equal Opportunity Commission and other people at the end of January, 1990. The Human Rights Commission in Sydney phoned in February to say they were very concerned and would be interested to see what the WA EO...

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"For too long, progressives have been scared off issues of family structure and parenting by a fear of being misinterpreted as blaming some of the hardest-working people in society", says Andrew Leigh . But for many of today's progressives, raising issues about single parentho...

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I just read Andrew Leigh’s new book that he will launch July 1 st in Canberra , July 2 nd in Melbourne, and July 3 rd in Sydney. I encourage you to attend one of these because it’s a ‘good yarn’. In this new book, Andrew makes a plea for an egalitarian Australia that values ma...

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[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460"] Balls around the world[/caption] Like Adam Smith said "In civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship...

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There have been some recent racism incidents and the awkwardness of speaking up about it. I am way ahead of them. This was written in 1991. “X” and “Y” have been substituted here for bus company names. Blacks to the Back of the Bus, Part One It is after midnight. The coach is...

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I didn't know this - until my son told me. From this website . Sometimes it is necessary for doctors to get access to the heart either for diagnosis or treatment. The simplest way to do this might seem to be to hack open the chest and have a look at the organ itself. Obviously...

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This year, and the last, the lovely Lowy Institute Poll has produced a headline grabbing finding that Australians, and particularly young Australians, are ambivalent about democracy . The search for meaning was on. This year it was attributed, in part, to a generation who have...

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Fallout from the Snowden saga continues to spread. Take Hong Kong's press release on Sunday: Mr Edward Snowden left Hong Kong today (June 23) on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel. The US Government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR Gov...

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Does the Market Value Value-Added? Evidence from Housing Prices After a Public Release of School and Teacher Value-Added by Scott A. Imberman, Michael F. Lovenheim - #19157 (ED PE) Value-added data are an increasingly common evaluation tool for schools and teachers. Many schoo...

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1uyQZNg2vE

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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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The PC has just published and sent me a nice little booklet called the PC Productivity Update . It's the first of its kind and the new chair Peter Harris tells us in his Foreword that "Despite the best efforts of statisticians and economists, the measurement and interpretation...

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OK, well that heading was a little extreme but one thing that's been increasingly giving me the hebes is the extent to which those organising 'think' sessions focus on profile. I recently attended one such roundtable attended by all sorts of worthies, but it was pretty hard to...

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