Justice Radich has just made the following rulings: It is very rare for the judiciary to make rulings such as this, but the way TPM went about their decision making was so flawed, that the Judge felt he had to. This is a humiliating loss for Tamihere and his deputy co-leaders, especially the explicit instruction…
Te Pāti Māori get slaughtered by the High Court
Te Pāti Māori get slaughtered by the High Court
10 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in law and economics, politics - New Zealand
Covid-19 Royal Commission report released
10 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in Alfred Marshall, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, economics of natural disasters, economics of regulation, health economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: economics of pandemics
The Royal Commission has released their second and final report. Some key aspects: Simeon Brown points out: The post Covid-19 Royal Commission report released first appeared on Kiwiblog.
Covid-19 Royal Commission report released
Britain has just two days of gas as Middle East flow runs dry
10 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, energy economics Tags: British politics
By Paul Homewood h/t Doug Brodie Britain has as little as two days of gas stored up, raising fears of a potential crisis as supplies from the Middle East dry up. The UK’s gas reserves have shrunk from 18,000 GWh worth last year to 6,700 GWh – enough for just 1.5 days […]
Britain has just two days of gas as Middle East flow runs dry
The Wealth of Nations: Happy 250th Birthday!
09 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in Adam Smith, applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history
TweetIn today’s National Post I celebrate the 250th anniversary – which is this coming Monday, March 9th – of the publication of Adam Smith’s An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. A slice: Smith then inquired into wealth’s causes. He didn’t inquire into the causes of poverty. Smith understood that…
The Wealth of Nations: Happy 250th Birthday!
Democratic Leaders Struggle to Explain Their Past Support for Unilateral Presidential War Powers
09 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, International law, laws of war, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: regressive left
In Rage and the Republic, I quote former Rep. Jaamal Bowman (D., N.Y.) as capturing the essence of an age…
Democratic Leaders Struggle to Explain Their Past Support for Unilateral Presidential War Powers
New results on the economic costs of climate change
09 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in econometerics, economics of climate change, economics of natural disasters, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: climate alarmism
I promised you I would be tracking this issue, and so here is a major development. From the QJE by Adrien Bilal and Diego R Känzig:: This paper estimates that the macroeconomic damages from climate change are an order of magnitude larger than previously thought. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1○C warming reduces world…
New results on the economic costs of climate change
Bill Maher’s latest New Rule: “Trump Estrangement Syndrome”
08 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in politics - USA, television, TV shows
Bill Maher’s latest news-and-comedy shtick on “Real Time” deals once again with the flak he got for having dinner with President Trump. Remember? Despite Maher constantly criticizing the President’s policies durin gthe dinner, he also reported that he found Trump affable and friendly. That was enough for liberals to come down on Maher like a…
Bill Maher’s latest New Rule: “Trump Estrangement Syndrome”
Selective Outrage and the Erosion of Genocide Meaning
08 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, law and economics, laws of war, liberalism, Marxist economics, war and peace
There is something profoundly wrong with a moral culture that shouts genocide at Israel’s war against Hamas while averting its gaze from an actual genocide unfolding in Sudan. Words matter, especially words that name humanity’s gravest crimes. When they are deployed selectively—loudly against one conflict, quietly or not at all against another—they cease to illuminate injustice and instead reveal hypocrisy. […]
Selective Outrage and the Erosion of Genocide Meaning
The Hidden Cost of Hard-to-Fire Labor Laws: Why European Firms Don’t Take Risks
08 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, labour economics, law and economics, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics, property rights, Public Choice, theory of the firm, unemployment Tags: creative destruction, employment law, European Union, Germany
In our textbook, Modern Principles, Tyler and I write: Imagine how difficult it would be to get a date if every date required marriage? In the same way, it’s more difficult to find a job when every job requires a long-term commitment from the employer. In two new excellent pieces, Brian Albrecht and Pieter Garicano…
The Hidden Cost of Hard-to-Fire Labor Laws: Why European Firms Don’t Take Risks
The Vietnam War and racial integration
07 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, discrimination, economics of love and marriage, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: marriage and divorce, racial discrimination, Vietnam war
The Vietnam draft conscripted hundreds of thousands of young Americans into an integrated military. I combine near-random draft lottery variation with administrative voter data to study the long-run racial integration effects of coerced national service. Black and Native American veterans became more likely to marry white spouses, identify as Republicans, and live in more-integrated neighborhoods.…
The Vietnam War and racial integration
The actual helicopter drop?
07 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, financial economics, growth disasters, history of economic thought, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, property rights
When Milton Friedman pondered what would happen if a helicopter dropped $1,000 from the sky, he likely never imagined that one day a military cargo plane would scatter millions of dollars into one of Bolivia’s largest cities. But while the Nobel Prize-winning economist worried about the inflation that an influx of cash could generate, the impact in…
The actual helicopter drop?
The Nightmare Scenario Leading to a Wealth Tax
07 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, income redistribution, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
Is it time to pack our belongings and head to Argentina, where Javier Milei is dramatically improving economic policy and cultural attitudes? I’m joking, but also not joking. The reason I’m not joking is that there’s a very depressing scenario for America’s near-term economic outlook. It involves these six potential developments. Thanks in part to […]
The Nightmare Scenario Leading to a Wealth Tax
Population changes helping Republicans
07 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
The latest US population estimates will help the Republicans in the 2032 presidential election, according to this analysis. It suggests blue states will lose 10 electoral votes, swing states gain one and red states gain nine. This will only matter in a very close election such as 2000, but it is interesting that so many…
Population changes helping Republicans
What if Hitler had been killed?
06 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: Nazi Germany, The Holocaust, World War II
On July 20, 1944, a group of German officers planned a daring assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler. This attack was part of a broader conspiracy within the German army and administrative elite, known as the July 20 plot or Operation Valkyrie. In the early afternoon, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg placed a bomb in a briefcase […]
What if Hitler had been killed?
Dismantling the competition myth
06 Mar 2026 Leave a comment
in Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, organisational economics, politics - Australia, technological progress, theory of the firm Tags: competition law, creative destruction
Ask anyone in Australia’s competition law community what transformed the economy, and you will hear a familiar story. Australia was once a cartelised, complacent place where businesses divided up markets and consumers paid the price. Then came the Trade Practices Act in 1974, and competition law forced firms to compete. This is not a fringe […]
Dismantling the competition myth
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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