Why Is Marijuana Legal in Some States and Not Others?
24 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economics of crime, economics of regulation, health economics, law and economics Tags: federalism, war on drugs
@jono_naylor only question was why wasn’t this career criminal deported sooner
23 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: Australia, career criminals, crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, deportations, economics of immigration, law and order
When a non-citizen spends 10 of his 40 odd years in Australia behind bars, most recently in 2011, the only question that should be posed is why was not he deported much earlier?
Source: Former criminal deported and separated from family after 40 years in Australia | Stuff.co.nz.
He is a career criminal who deserves no sympathy. He is the author of his own misfortunes in being separated from his family in Australia. Sympathy should go to his many victims, not to him.
More fool him when he spent 9 months in immigration detention because he chose to appeal his deportation. The criterion for automatic cancellation of Australian visas for criminals is accumulating 12 months in prison. That is a low threshold for automatic deportation unless the minister grants a waiver.
With 10 years behind bars, his appeal had no chance of success. He was a career criminal Australia could well be shot off.
#MorganFoundation errors about @nzinitiative’s Health of the State – part 1
22 Apr 2016 3 Comments
in economics of information, economics of regulation, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: Aaron Director, alcohol regulation, economics of obesity, economics of prohibition, economics of smoking, meddlesome preferences, Morgan Foundation, nanny state
The Greens have joined that Morgan Foundation in playing the man rather than the ball on the recently published report of the New Zealand Initiative on sin taxes. Green Party health spokesperson Kevin Hague said:
The New Zealand Initiative cares more about junk-food barons’ bottom lines than it cares about Kiwis who are getting sick and dying because of obesity-related illnesses
The Morgan Foundation was just as keen to argue that their opponents on sin taxes are both ignorant and steeped in moral turpitude as a way of avoiding substantive argument:
The New Zealand Initiative are not interested in reducing obesity, or preventing the looming diabetes crisis where 1 in 3 Kiwis will have the disease. They make no attempt to understand the causes, and don’t propose any way to deal with these issues…
Is there no room for honest disagreement and different views on the ability of further government intervention to be a net benefit? As Aaron Director said:
Laissez-faire is no more than a slogan in defence of the proposition that every extension of state activity should be examined under the presumption of error.
One of the specific claims by the Morgan Foundation that seems to be in error is:
In fact, the report seems devoid of any research outside a narrow economic focus. The food industry has funded an enormous amount of psychological research on how to influence people to eat more junk food through packaging, advertising, product placement etc, much of which is publicly available, but which the New Zealand Institute has roundly ignored. Ironic, given that they funded by the same organisations that funded this psychological research.
The Food industry’s own research shows our choices are hugely influenced by the environment that surrounds us, but the New Zealand Institute conveniently prefers to cling to the oversimplification that we are all rational economic units – known as homo economicus.
The report of the New Zealand Initiative has a nice discussion of the limitations of rationality which did not weigh as heavily as it should in the critique by the Morgan Foundation part of which is in the snapshot below:
Source: Jenesa Jeram, The Health of the State, The New Zealand Initiative ( April 2016, p.10).
George Plunkitt of Tammany Hall on the difference between honest and dishonest political graft
21 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, economics of media and culture, law and economics, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: bribery and corruption
In the book Plunkitt of Tammany Hall William Riordan published many of George Washington Plunkitt’s thoughts about government and about big city machines. In the link below, you can find the passage that explains the difference between honest and dishonest graft.
Honest graft is using your connections and knowledge as a government official to enrich yourself. It is essentially what we would now call “insider trading.”
Honest graft is when a goverment official goes out (for example) and buys up land because he knows a city project will need that land and he will be able to make a lot of money by buying the land now while no one else knows that it is about to be bought by the city. He can buy it cheap and then sell it at a higher price to the city.
Dishonest graft consists of doing things like blackmailing people who are doing illegal or semi-illegal things. It can also consist of actually taking money directly from the city treasury.
It is more of what you would expect mobsters to do–things like forcing prostitutes to pay money to police in order to be allowed to work in a given area rather than being arrested.
Source: How does George Plunkitt define “honest/dishonest graft”? | eNotes.
I thought men was supposed to be superficial, but maybe the increase is not statistically significant
21 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of love and marriage Tags: dating markets, marriage and divorce, search and matching
Thinking about The Great Leap Forward | Econbrowser
19 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic growth, economic history, growth disasters, industrial organisation, law and economics, Marxist economics, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: China, economics of planning, extreme poverty, famine, Great Leap Forward
#Morganfoundation discovers that #Ukraine is a dodgy place to buy credence goods
19 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, economics of crime, economics of information, environmental economics, global warming, industrial organisation, international economic law, international economics, International law, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, survivor principle Tags: adverse selection, asymmetric information, carbon trading, climate alarmism, climate alarmists, credence goods, experience goods, inspection goods
Morgan Foundation yesterday put out a report pointing out that many of the carbon credits purchased from the Ukraine under the carbon trading scheme are fraudulent.
That comes with no surprise to anyone vaguely familiar with business conditions and the level of official corruption in the former Soviet Union. Russia is a more honest place to do business.
Carbon traders who buy from the Ukraine are not buying an inspection good. An inspection good is a good whose quality you can ascertain before purchase.
They are not buying an experience good. An experience good is a good whose quality is ascertained after purchase in the course of consumption.
Source: Russia, Ukraine dodgy carbon offsets cost the climate – study | Climate Home – climate change news.
What these carbon traders in New Zealand are doing is buying credence goods from the Ukraine. The credence goods are the carbon credits, which the Morgan Foundation and others have found often to be fraudulent.
A credence good is a good whose value is difficult or impossible for the consumer to ascertain. A classic example of a credence good is motor vehicle repairs.
You must trust the seller and their advice as to how much you need to buy of a credence good. Many forms of medical treatment also require you to trust the seller as to how much you need.
Carbon credits are such a credence good. You know there is corruption in the Ukraine and many other countries that supply them. You may never know at any reasonable cost whether the specific carbon credits you buy were legitimate.
The reason why carbon credits are purchased from such an unreliable source is expressive voting. As is common with expressive politics, what matters is whether the voters cheer or boo the policy. The fact whether it works or not does not matter too much.
The Greens are upset about this corruption in carbon trading. They did not mention the corruption in international carbon trading and climate aid when they welcomed the recent Paris treaty on global warming but that is for another day.
https://twitter.com/kadhimshubber/status/721831502372302849
Co-ordinated international action on global warming is rather pointless if some of the key countries with carbon emission caps are corrupt, which they are.
As Geoff Brennan has argued, CO2 reduction actions will be limited to modest unilateral reductions of a largely token character. There are many expressive voting concerns that politicians must balance to stay in office and the environment is but one of these.
Once climate change policies start to actually become costly to swinging voters, expressive voting support for these policies will fall away, and it has.
Networked Carbon Markets
Source: World Bank Networked Carbon Markets.
One way to stem that fading support is to buy carbon credits on the cheap and there is plenty of disreputable suppliers of cheap carbon credits. Buying dodgy carbon credits as a way of doing something on global warming without it costing more than expressive voters will pay.
One of the predictions of the adverse selection literature is that if consumers cannot differentiate good and bad goods from each other, such as with used cars, the market will contract sharply or even collapse because buyers cannot trust what is on offer. This risk of adverse selection undermining a market applies with clarity to carbon trading.
Source: How Can Your Vote Shape a Low Carbon Future? It Starts with Carbon Pricing.
The cost of starting a business in Europe and North America
18 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights Tags: barriers to entry, Belgium, British economy, Canada, Denmark, doing business, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain
These measures including the full cost of starting a business. Not only are official fees included, the opportunity cost of the waiting times for various permits are issued are added as well.
Source: Markus Poschke, Entry regulation: Still costly | VOX, CEPR’s Policy Portal (2011).
Note: The value of time is set to a business day’s output per day of waiting time at 22 business days per month.
Water Policies for People, by David Zetland
18 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, economics of regulation, environmental economics, industrial organisation, law and economics, privatisation, property rights, survivor principle Tags: Economics of water
The future should sue today’s climate activists for slowing The Great Escape
16 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, economics of media and culture, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, growth miracles, law and economics Tags: climate activists, climate alarmism, extreme poverty, The Great Enrichment, The Great Escape, vexatious litigation
The scale of the #Panamapapers leak
16 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, property rights, public economics Tags: conspiracy theories, tax havens
Why Thieves Steal Soap
15 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of crime, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice Tags: crime and punishment, law and order
Stealing soap is almost as good as stealing cash.
Soap and razor blades are surprisingly valuable to petty thieves because they are easy to offload at the pub or the local market stalls
Source: Why Thieves Steal Soap
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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