Oliver Hartwich writes – New Zealand’s government sacked the entire board of Health New Zealand (Te Whatu Ora) last week, replacing it with a sole commissioner. The move marked more than just another shake-up in the country’s beleaguered health system. It signalled the spectacular failure of a grand experiment that has turned New Zealand into […]
Pervasive myth of centralisation unravels in NZ
Pervasive myth of centralisation unravels in NZ
06 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, health economics, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics, survivor principle
Communism still doing well in Cuba
05 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, growth disasters, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, Marxist economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics Tags: Cuba
The Miami Herald reports: A stunning 10% of Cuba’s population — more than a million people — left the island between 2022 and 2023, the head of the country’s national statistics office said during a National Assembly session Friday, the largest migration wave in Cuban history. Isn’t it such a weird coincidence that the queue […]
Communism still doing well in Cuba
Talking BBB with Veronique de Rugy
03 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply
Here’s a lively AIER podcast on Build, Baby, Build with the one and only Veronique de Rugy. Best French libertarian since Bastiat? Décider vous-même!P.S. Capla-Con 2024 starts two weeks from tomorrow in Fairfax, Virginia. You’re all invited! Feel free to coordinate ride-sharing in the comments.
Talking BBB with Veronique de Rugy
Don’t Mess with Texas: Fifth Circuit Rules Against the Biden Administration in Buoy Dispute on Southern Border
02 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, defence economics, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice Tags: 2024 presidential election, economics of immigration
Texas won a big victory in the United States Court of Appeals in the long struggle over floating buoy barriers in the Rio Grande River to help block unlawful migration. In United States v. Abbott, the court ruled 11-7 in an en banc decision against the Biden Administration over the barrier. It is an interesting decision […]
Don’t Mess with Texas: Fifth Circuit Rules Against the Biden Administration in Buoy Dispute on Southern Border
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism and Intellectuals
01 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, economic history, history of economic thought, macroeconomics
See Socialists, Knowledge of History and Agency. These are letters to the editor of The WSJ in response to an article about socialism by Joseph Epstein. The one below reminded me of a 1992 article by Robert Samuelson in Newsweek. “Joseph Epstein’s “Socialists Don’t Know History” (op-ed, May 30, 2019) on the abysmal historical knowledge…
Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism and Intellectuals
The Minimum Wage, Rent Control, and Vacancies or Who Searches?
31 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, econometerics, economic history, economics of regulation, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, minimum wage, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, regulation, rentseeking, unemployment, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, regressive left, rent control
In an interesting new paper Federal Reserve economists Marianna Kudlyak, Murat Tasci and Didem Tüzemen look at what happens to job vacancy postings when the minimum wage increases. The vacancy data in our analysis come from the job openings data from the Conference Board as a part of its Help Wanted OnLine (HWOL) data series. […]
The Minimum Wage, Rent Control, and Vacancies or Who Searches?
Rent Control Reduces New Development: Bug or Feature?
30 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, regressive left, rent control
The minimum wage will tend to increase unemployment among low-skill workers, often minorities. To many people that’s an argument against the minimum wage. But to progressives at the opening of the 20th century that was an argument for the minimum wage–progressive’s demanded minimum wages to get women and racial minorities out of the work force. […]
Rent Control Reduces New Development: Bug or Feature?
Tikanga, law and information asymmetry
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights Tags: constitutional law
Justice Joe Williams in his 2013 paper Lex Aoteoroa made a case for Māori tikanga being recognized as New Zealand’s “first law”. Tikanga existed prior to New Zealand’s development of a legal system based on the British model. Without written language pre-European Māori tikanga is not well documented. However, its customs and norms governed, for […]
Tikanga, law and information asymmetry
Not a good case for a CBDC
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, financial economics, law and economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights Tags: digital currency
The Reserve Bank’s latest round of consultation on a possible central bank digital currency (CBDC) closes today. The thick and probably expensive (at least one of the documents was produced jointly with the consultancy firm Accenture) set of consultation documents came up a few months ago. I thought I had run out of time to […]
Not a good case for a CBDC
MICHAEL BASSETT: DEALING WITH TODAY’S SMALL, RAUCOUS, CRAZY MAORI FRINGE
22 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, economic history, income redistribution, International law, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: constitutional law, Maori economic development
Anyone watching and trying to understand last Sunday’s Q&A where Jack Tame interviewed Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will realise that she seems to be beyond reason. Tame tried to examine bits of her blather and her obvious misuse of words, but she immediately slithered like an eel under a rock and made louder assertions about how Maori “korero”…
MICHAEL BASSETT: DEALING WITH TODAY’S SMALL, RAUCOUS, CRAZY MAORI FRINGE
BBB in the NYT
15 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
I pitch Build, Baby, Build in today’s New York Times. No illustrations, but a bunch of cool graphs cooked up by Sara Chodosh of the NYT data analytics team. The original title was “The Panacea Policy,” but now it’s “Yes in My Backyard: The Case For Housing Deregulation.” And for you, dear readers, it’s ungated!…
BBB in the NYT
Biden’s Desperate Vote-Buying Proposal for Nationwide Rent Control
15 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: rent control
I’m not a political pundit, but I’m guessing that yesterday’s despicable assassination attempt on Donald Trump increases the likelihood that he reclaims the White House. That’s probably not good news for trade policy (though Biden has been just as bad), but it will be very good news for housing policy. Not because of what Trump […]
Biden’s Desperate Vote-Buying Proposal for Nationwide Rent Control
Market Preserving Federalism in the USA
14 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economics of bureaucracy, income redistribution, Public Choice, rentseeking
One of my favorite economic journal articles is by Barry Weingast and has the short title “Market Preserving Federalism” (MPF). In this paper, Weingast lays out the conditions necessary for two tenuous equilibria: A) Federalism & B) Federalism that preserves a market economy. Given that we just celebrated Independence Day in the USA, it seems […]
Market Preserving Federalism in the USA
Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT
12 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, income redistribution, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice, regulation, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, zoning
Here is one excerpt: What few appreciate is that the overregulation of housing has blocked a classic American path: moving to a higher-wage part of the country to secure a better life. A paper by the economists Peter Ganong and Daniel Shoag shows that housing costs now routinely outweigh wage gains: While janitors and waiters do indeed […]
Bryan Caplan on YIMBY in the NYT
Is France about to demonstrate “ideal” semi-presidentialism in action?
12 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, law and economics, Public Choice Tags: France
The outcome of the French assembly election of 2024 appears to have set up a situation that could be described as the “ideal” way that semi-presidential systems are meant to operate, based on how such governance models were articulated by their original theorists.
Is France about to demonstrate “ideal” semi-presidentialism in action?
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