Club Troppo

Osper is a smart new London startup. Here's its pitch to Angel investors . Osper is a cash card for young people with a mobile banking app with login for mum and dad (with parental controls) and login for young people (which teaches responsible money management). The cash card...

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As I've said before, the PM's Science Prize is a blast . And they're now taking nominations . So if you have or had a great science teacher, or know or are a great Australian scientist. Now's the time to nominate.

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Take your bog-standard first-year economics story of why money (sea shells, coins, notes, bank statements) exist. Money, you will be told, is a means of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of accounting, thoughts going back to David Hume (18th century) and earlier. When exp...

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I've never heard of EDwin Tanner, but he does a cute line in pictures if this is anything to go by. It went under the hammer at 45K (I think plus 20 odd per cent buyer's premium) last Dec. Details here .

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In the first two parts, the readers and I looked at the long list of sectors in Australia where there is a privileged minority who, with the help of the government, is in a position to extract more than their fair share of income out of the economy. Medical specialists, GPs, b...

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American blogger Matt Bruenig sparked an interesting debate recently with his claim that conservatives are better organised and less ideologically diverse than those on the left . This is a response. To those on the left, the American conservative movement appears as a leviath...

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http://youtu.be/CrczSkNSQR4 http://youtu.be/vo3pY_jmn2w

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As initially thought, the basic economic unit in Kolkata and West Bengal generally seems to be the family, not the individual. As a result, families invest in the education of their children and expect to share in the returns. Also, most businesses here are family businesses a...

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[caption id="attachment_33459" align="alignleft" width="646"] Why is this man trying to annoy Republicans?[/caption] Here's an extract from a recent article from the AFR which seems to be parading its private sector ideological friendliness in the way that the Oz started doing...

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We analyze patterns of bilateral financial investment using data on US investors' holdings of foreign bonds. We document a "history effect" in which the pattern of holdings seven decades ago continues to influence holdings today. 10 to 15% of the cross-country variation in US...

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I am visiting Kolkata this week, the Centre for the Study of Social Science Calcutta. It is a great chance to collect observations and cross-check economic theories on India. What I tend to do when visiting a new country is to assemble lots of preliminary hypotheses I have on...

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Marian Borges of The Age recently wrote seeking comment on an article on fire prevention which was subsequently written up by her and Peter Martin here . I didn't have time to really check out the article but sent her a response in which I expressed a kind of generalised scept...

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In part I the question was posed to the readers which privileges bothered them most about Australia and what they thought could be done to reduce them. In this part I want to start to consider the barriers by talking about the ‘face’ of any privilege and how this creates parti...

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[caption id="attachment_22323" align="alignright" width="307"] The 1947 Grand Ozzie winner holds our restrained Austin Holmes Memorial Trophy.[/caption] The Ozzies are, of course, Club Troppo's annual awards for think-tankery. Handed out ever since Troppo's founding in 1863, t...

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A question for you: how to combat privilege? As economists well know, we are all rent seekers who try to secure more and more privileges for ourselves and our families, be it monopoly rights (such as currently legally given to medical specialists or local pharmacies), over-pri...

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Have a look at this just-published article in PNAS by Jerome Dangerman and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber on the topic of climate change: Abstract The contemporary industrial metabolism is not sustainable. Critical problems arise at both the input and the output side of the complex...

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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="662"] Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted this fresco on Good Government in Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. It's a famous landmark in Western painting, argued by some to herald the Renaissance. Interesting that it should be so preoccupied by public g...

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Well I’m overseas at present but I’ve received my first request for a renewal of the annual Crikey subscription. And in these days of email it can all be done with very little work, so I’m opening subscriptions for a record breaking, seventh year. (I have no idea how long I’ve...

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I regularly get asked by young Australian academics nearing the end of their PhD about the tradeoffs inherent in different positions they can apply for: post-doc or tenure-track; academia or policy land; researcher or administrator; a school of economics or a research institut...

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Just before Xmas, I asked the readers at Core and at Troppo what they though the best bits of news of 2012 were. Many, including myself but also David Walker, Steve Dunera, Tel and Jim Rose thought that last year was another in a long period of strong economic development in t...

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