HT: https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/514432333756514305?s=09
Global warming has little impact on agricultural production, even in the 2080s
23 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in experimental economics, politics - USA Tags: climate alarmism, global warming
THE TRUTH ABOUT PRIVATISATION: BLOG # 5
23 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
In foreshadowing partial privatisation of some SOEs and Air New Zealand, the government is placing emphasis on the case for reducing debt. There was a similar emphasis in the privatisations of the late 1980s.
This case is valid but it is a secondary argument. The main argument is about economic efficiency: that on average and over time, privately owned enterprises out-perform publicly owned ones (and hence contribute more to national income).
For some years the most commonly cited meta-study in support of this view was a 2001 Journal of EconomicLiterature (JEL) article by Megginson and Netter. The JEL is the leading economic journal for survey articles of this kind. As summarised by Phil Barry in his report for the Business Roundtable, the paper found that:
- of the ten studies examining the relative efficiency of private and public enterprises operating in the same industry, eight studies found the private sector…
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Six major takeaways from Microsoft’s Windows 10 announcement
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
People queued up for hours when polio vaccine first became available
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics Tags: anti-vaccination movement, The Great Escape, vaccines
Moscow, 1956
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Faith In Humanity Restored
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Gender pay gap: do women earn 77% of what men do?
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of love and marriage, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - USA Tags: employer discrimination, gender wage gap, sex discrimination
Off button for kitten
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
Rational Asset-Price Movements without News
22 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics
The majority of major share market movements occur without any particular news hitting the market.
Studies of the 50 largest share market movements in the US stock market between 1946 and 1987 found that the majority of them could not be explained by news. That includes the 1987 share market crash. In October 1987, shares fell by 20% in one day for no obvious reason.
David Romer explained these booms and busts, including the 1987 share market crash in two ways: investor uncertainty about the quality of other investors’ information; and dispersion of information and small costs to trading:
Asset prices can change because initially the market does an imperfect job of revealing the relevant information possessed by different investors and because developments within the market can then somehow cause more of that information to be revealed
Either of these models are perfectly plausible. Investors learn from each other through trading and improve their estimations of the value of various shares.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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