29 Sep 2015
by Jim Rose
in economic history, energy economics, financial economics, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle, transport economics
Tags: KiwiRail, privatisation, Solid Energy, state owned enterprises, suppressing voting

Source: The New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.

Source: The New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.
29 Sep 2015
by Jim Rose
in economic history, environmental economics, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, resource economics, survivor principle
Tags: agricultural economics, Landcorp, privatisation, state owned enterprises
Landcorp is a state-owned enterprise of the New Zealand government. Its core business is pastoral farming including dairy, sheep, beef and deer. In January 2012, Landcorp managed 137 properties carrying 1.5 million stock units on 376,156 hectares of land. Its total return to shareholders, the taxpayers, has been quite up-and-down in recent years.

Source: The New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.

Source: The New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.

Source: The New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.
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25 Sep 2015
by Jim Rose
in financial economics, industrial organisation, politics - New Zealand, public economics, rentseeking, survivor principle, transport economics
Tags: government ownership, KiwiRail, privatisation, rational ignorance, rational rationality, state owned enterprises, suppressive voting
The New Zealand Labour Party and New Zealand Greens both make much of the fact that when you privatise a state-owned enterprise the taxpayer is no longer entitled to dividends from the privatised business. The fact that the sale price is the net present value of those future dividends is a rating fallacy that is not the subject of this post.

Source: New Zealand Treasury – data released under the Official Information Act.
What is the subject of this post is whether there are indeed any dividends paid to taxpayers after capital injections. 2007 was the last year in which dividends to the taxpayer exceeded capital injections. The reason was that dog called KiwiRail.
24 Sep 2015
by Jim Rose
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, health economics, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights, survivor principle
Tags: creative destruction, endogenous growth theory, innovation, intellectual property rights, patents and copyrights, pharmaceutical innovation, price controls
Our research shows that when prices fall, innovation falls even more. Patients would see their lives cut short by delayed or absent drugs.
Source: Drug Price Controls End Up Costing Patients Their Health – NYTimes.com
…cutting prices by 40 to 50 percent in the United States will lead to between 30 and 60 percent fewer R and D projects being undertaken in the early stage of developing a new drug. Relatively modest price changes, such as 5 or 10 percent, are estimated to have relatively little impact on the incentives for product development – perhaps a negative 5 percent.
Source: The Effect of Price Controls on Pharmaceutical Research



Source: U.S. Pharmaceutical Policy In A Global Marketplace
21 Sep 2015
by Jim Rose
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, economic history, industrial organisation, Ludwig von Mises, survivor principle
Tags: competition and monopoly, consumer sovereignty, creative destruction, entrepreneurial alertness, market selection, The meaning of competition
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