(This is my 29,994th post, so we’ll reach 30,000 by the end of the weekend. I don’t know what to think about that!) I think we all know now that most Americans, and a majority of individuals in both Democratic and Republican parties, oppose the participation of trans-identified males in women’s sports, presumably on the […]
Bob Edlin writes – Labour leader Chris Hipkins has told RNZ’s Morning Report the Labour Party will not support the Māori Party’s outrageous call for the establishment of a parliamentary commissioner for the Treaty of Waitangi with the extraordinary power to veto parliamentary decisions. His position is stated in this account of his response to […]
Over the past half-century, the share of men enrolled in college has steadily declined relative to women. Today, 1.6 million more women than men attend four-year colleges in the U.S. This trend has not lowered marriage rates for college women, a substantial share of whom have historically married economically stable men without college degrees. Both […]
Just to show you how, in the hiring process, New Zealand gives much more weight to identity than to merit, I enclose part of the job description for the position of Chief Operating Officer of Wellington Water, the water utility for the Greater Wellington region (Wellington, a lovely city, is the capital of New Zealand). […]
Don Brash and Michael Reddell write – When Don was young and Michael’s parents were young, New Zealand had among the very highest material standards of living in the world. It really was, in the old line, one of the very best places to bring up children. But no longer. For 75 years now, with […]
I have a special page for humor involving Europe, but I have not added to it since sharing some Brexit humor in 2016. Let’s being the process of catching up with some amusing cartoons and memes mocking our government-loving cousins on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve made the serious point that bureaucrats […]
Below is my column in the Hill on the move of the Trump Administration against birthright citizenship. The Trump Administration believes that this is fight worth either winning or even losing in the courts. Roughly half of the country oppose birthright citizenship. The key is where those voters are coming from. The minority of voters […]
It’s well-known that when a couple has a child, the average woman experiences a “child penalty” in labor market outcomes, while outcomes for the man are largely unchanged. For a discussion of this pattern using US data, here’s an article by Jane Waldfogel from back in 1998 in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. As that…
By Claudia Goldin. From NPR’s Planet Money.”Countries around the world have seen a jaw-dropping decline in fertility rates. In this paper, Claudia Goldin, the 2023 winner of the Nobel Prize in economic sciences, offers a new theory to help explain why (listen to The Indicator’s conversation with her back in 2021). Goldin starts by providing…
By David J. Deming, Christopher Ong, and Lawrence H. Summers. From NPR’s Planet Money. Summers was Secretary of the Treasury from 1999 to 2001, director of the National Economic Council from 2009 to 2010 and president of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.”Obviously, there is a big fear right now that artificial intelligence will kill…
Here! I’ve been dealing with trivial stuff all day involving billing and the post office (the Black Hole of government agencies) and have had no time to right. Enjoy Stephen Fry’s hourlong talk on Triggernometry on why the American Left promoted the rise of the American Right. I’ve been saying that for a long time, […]
The subtitle is New Estimates of Productivity Growth in England from 1250 to 1870, and the authors are Paul Bouscasse, Emi Nakamura, and Jón Steinsson. Abstract: We estimate productivity growth in England from 1250 to 1870. Real wages over this period were heavily influenced by plague-induced swings in the population. Our estimates account for these […]
I’ve spent the last week writing a fairly substantial review of a recent book (“Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism: How we crushed the curve but lost the race”) by a couple of Australian academic economists on Australia’s pandemic policies and experiences. For all its limitations, there isn’t anything similar in New Zealand. What we do have is […]
Presented Jan 30, 2025 Kia Ora. Morena. Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou, Tena Koutou Katoa. My name is Ananish Chaudhuri. I am Professor of Economics at the University of Auckland. My views are my own and not those of my employer. Thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to speak this morning.…
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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