When a city bids to host the Olympic Games, part of the bid is a commitment that the city or the national government will cover any cost overruns–and experience suggests the cost overruns will be large. Alexander Budzier and Bent Flyvbjerg discuss the patterns in “The Oxford Olympics Study 2024: Are Cost and Cost Overrun…
The Green Party has a Member’s Bill up arguing for a consumer right of repair; Auckland University’s Alex Sims has written a few columns in support of such a thing. I’d had an email asking about that legislation; figured I’d share my response here – tidied up a bit.If it’s more expensive to produce a product…
The media is sorry . . . sort of. After the shocking appearance of President Joe Biden in the presidential debate, the public has turned its attention to the press which has, again, buried a major scandal for years. According to CNN, the reporters at the White House are really, really sorry but explained that […]
Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase once quipped that he left antitrust because “When prices go up, its monopolization, when prices fall it’s predation, and when they stay the same it’s collusion.” As if to illustrate this idea, the FTC’s Chair is reversing herself to bring a case against Amazon. On one hand, booksellers argue that Amazon…
Among the hundreds of medicines now in short supply are popular drugs used for weight loss such as OzempicBy Liz Essley Whyte and Peter Loftus of The WSJ. I liked that this article mentions that price increases are part of the solution, something that usually does get mentioned. A shortage means that current price is below…
When it comes to the question of how best to avoid a banking collapse and multi-billion dollar bailout that can drag a whole nation into depression, the best solution, according to Chicago-Stanford economist, John Cochrane, is to require banks to set aside a fraction of their own funds as reserves to cover losses they may…
Previously, we could observe a higher proportion of men than women in, say, steel fabrication and suspect that men have “some sort” of physical or mental comparative advantage related to steel fabrication. But what does that mean?
DETERRENCE IN MERGER REVIEW: LIKELY EFFECTS OF RECENT U.S. POLICY CHANGESBy Luke M. Froeb, Steven T. Tschantz & Gregory J. WerdenWe model likely effects of Biden Administration changes in merger enforcement on five discrete decisions in the review process. We find that the policy changes can be expected to stop many bad mergers but only at the cost…
QUESTION TO CLAUDE 3: The EU and China lag behind the US in economic dynamism, measured by start-up activity, number of unicorns, age of unicorns (younger indicates more rapid innovation), and in productivity growth. Can you document this and tell me why?ANSWER: Here is the data to document the economic dynamism gap between the US,…
Like Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman is a French economist who promotes economically destructive class-warfare tax policy. He’s also infamous for dodgy data manipulation, as Phil Magness explains in this Reason discussion. The interview lasts for 64 minutes, and I recommend the entire discussion. Yes, that’s a lot of time, but Phil has encyclopedic knowledge and […]
The Herald reports: KiwiRail’s seemingly endless requests for more money is damning. At one point, KiwiRail assured Robertson when he was the Finance Minister that the worst-case scenario would be an extra $300 million before requesting $1.2 billion a few months later. Not what most people regard as worst case. It’s no wonder Ministry of Transport officials […]
Germany’s costly and chaotic wind and solar transition has served up plenty of casualties. Large numbers of energy intensive manufacturers have already bailed out – chasing cheap power prices in places like the US and Singapore. Now, in a rather ironic twist, its solar panel manufacturing industry has all but thrown in the towel. Notwithstanding […]
America’s offshore wind industry is collapsing, both figuratively and literally. Offshore turbines have grown in capacity and size to the point where they simply collapse into the ocean. As do the financial prospects of those seeking to profit from them. One of the key players offshore – GE’s renewables division – backed up a solid […]
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
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