Late last week The Treasury released a new 40 page report on “The productivity slowdown: implications for the Treasury’s forecasts and projections” (productivity forecasts and projections that is, rather than any possible fiscal implications – the latter will, I guess, be articulated in the Budget documents). In short, if (as it has) productivity growth has slowed down […]
Everything you need to know about wealth taxation can be summarized in two sentences. The biggest problem with most tax systems is the pervasive tax bias against income that is saved and invested, which discourages the accumulation of capital that helps to finance future growth. Wealth taxes would dramatically increase the tax bias against saving […]
Read the whole tweet. A Member of Parliament got up in the House and said the Government (which has a Cabinet which is 35% Māori) wants to exterminate Māori. Has the media reported this, with the editorials decrying such nonsensical and abusive language? Imagine if an ACT MP said in the House that a Labour-led […]
Deiana, Maheshr,and Mastrobuoniand have recently published an analysis of the effects of Search and Rescue operations on migration from Africa to Europe.Nearly half a century ago, Sam Peltzman showed that, because mandatory seat-belts made driving safer, drivers tended to drive more recklessly, partially offsetting the increased safety. Similar effects occurred in the search and rescue…
Why leave a tip? You have already received whatever food or service you are going to receive. Maybe if you are a very regular customer, tipping could lead to better service in the future. But most people who leave tips do so even if they are stopping off at, say, a restaurant in a city…
The most important election of 2023 took place in Argentina, where that nation’s voters elected the libertarian candidate, Javier Milei, as their new president. I discussed the outlook for Milei’s agenda on a recent appearance of the Schilling Show. Here’s a brief excerpt. As you can see, I’m worried that Milei faces enormous obstacles. Argentina […]
One of reasons Oranga Tamariki exists is to prevent child neglect. But could the organisation itself be guilty of the same? Oranga Tamariki’s statistics show a decrease in the number and age of children in care. “There are less children in care now than as at 30 June 2019 when there were 6450 children and…
Professor Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, was reportedly denied access to the main campus on Friday as his school ID was “deactivated” during the recent protests over the Israeli-Gaza conflict. What was equally concerning is that the university did so for his own protection out of concern that, as an outspoken […]
Several common measures — like employing a chief diversity officer, offering diversity training or having a diverse board — were not correlated with decreased discrimination in entry-level hiring, the researchers found. But one thing strongly predicted less discrimination: a centralized H.R. operation. The researchers recorded the voice mail messages that the fake applicants received. When a company’s […]
That is the new Daron Acemoglu paper, and he is skeptical about its overall economic effects. Here is part of the abstract: Using existing estimates on exposure to AI and productivity improvements at the task level, these macroeconomic effects appear nontrivial but modest—no more than a 0.71% increase in total factor productivity over 10 years.…
From “Diversity and Performance in Entrepreneurial Teams” (SSRN): Among the randomly-assigned teams [of MBA students], greater diversity along the intersection of gender and race/ethnicity significantly reduced performance. However, the negative effect of this diversity is alleviated … [when teams can choose their teammates]…teams with more female members perform substantially better when their faculty section leader was also…
Not that the socialist in question, Professor Richard D. Wolff, realises that’s what he’s doing in the Q&A video below – and he’s not talking about traditional Communist Command and Controlled Economies. What he’s actually describing is a very pure form of socialism, the sort only vaguely imagined by Marx, Engels and other communists when […]
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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