Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
23 May 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, economic growth, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics
Michael Reddell writes – There were good things in the Budget. There may be few/no votes in better macroeconomic statistics and, specifically, a monthly CPI but – years late (for which the current government can’t really be blamed) – it is finally going to happen.
The (deeply underwhelming) Budget
19 May 2025 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: economics of pandemics
Not that long ago, New Zealand’s fiscal balances looked pretty good by advanced country standards. Sure, the fiscal pressures from longer life expectancies were beginning to build – as they were in most of the advanced world – but in absolute and relative terms New Zealand still looked in pretty good shape. Just a few […]
Fiscal starting points
16 May 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics Tags: European Union
There’s an enormous amount of data showing that people in the United States enjoy much higher livings standards than Europeans. That’s not too surprising since most European governments have adopted large-sized welfare states while Americans are (comparatively!) lucky in that we have a medium-sized welfare state. That’s all very straightforward and uncontroversial. What’s not completely […]
Calculating America’s Lead over Europe
15 May 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, defence economics, economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics
Maybe not, isn’t that a form of double counting? After all, defense spending is there to enable the production of other goods and services, it is not useful per se. Chandler S. Reilly and Vincent Geloso recalculate the history of U.S. economic growth using this new method: In fact, our corrections applied to the entire […]
Should gdp include defense spending?
10 May 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, entrepreneurship, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice Tags: Finland, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
I’m currently in Finland for meetings with various people and I learned that the country’s bloated public sector and expensive welfare state are imposing a very heavy cost on the economy. How heavy of a cost? According to IMF data, there’s been no growth in per-capita GDP over the past 18 years. Why is Finland […]
The Economic Consequences of Ever-Growing Government in Finland
09 May 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, macroeconomics, politics - USA, technological progress Tags: British politics
The US economy has emerged from the pandemic growing at a faster pace than the UK and other high-income countries. Simon Pittaway tackles the question of why in “Yanked away: Accounting for the post-pandemic productivity divergence between Britain and America” (Resolution Foundation, April 2025). The average standard of living in any economy, over time, will…
Why Is the US Economy Surging Ahead of the UK?
10 Apr 2025 1 Comment
in applied price theory, business cycles, economic growth, economics of information, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, financial economics, global financial crisis (GFC), history of economic thought, industrial organisation, macroeconomics, politics - USA
Myron Scholes was on top of the world in 1997, having won the Nobel Prize in economics that year for his work in financial economics, work that he had applied in the real world in a wildly successful hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management. But just one year later, LTCM was saved from collapse only […]
When Genius Failed
03 Apr 2025 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic growth, economic history, law and economics, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: constitutional law
In an excellent article in the Herald, Richard Prebble (or “Prebs” as we call him) argues the proposals presented by National-ACT for a…
Prebs is Right – a 4 Year Parliamentary Term is no panacea to NZ’s stagnation. The problem is neither the Nats nor Labour have had a plan since 1993.
09 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, financial economics, fiscal policy, history of economic thought, inflation targeting, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (and FOMC), Ben Bernanke, was yesterday the first of two keynote speakers at the Reserve Bank’s conference to mark 35 years of inflation targeting, which first became a formalised thing here in New Zealand. He indicated that he’d be speaking about inflation targeting in general and […]
Bernanke on inflation targeting
05 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, budget deficits, economic growth, economics of bureaucracy, economics of natural disasters, economics of regulation, health economics, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, unemployment Tags: economics of pandemics
That’s the title of a 2024 book by a couple of Australian academic economists, Steven Hamilton (based in US) and Richard Holden (a professor at the University of New South Wales). The subtitle of the book is “How we crushed the curve but lost the race”. It is easy to get off on the wrong […]
Australia’s Pandemic Exceptionalism
01 Mar 2025 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, Euro crisis, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, history of economic thought, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: floating exchange rates
Last year there was an interesting new book out, made up of 29 collected short papers by (more or less) prominent economists given at a 2023 conference to mark Floating Exchange Rates at Fifty. The fifty years related to the transition back to generalised floating of the major developed world currencies in 1973 (think USD, […]
Forty years of floating
11 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, Euro crisis, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great recession, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, public economics Tags: Ireland, taxation and investment
I’m a big fan of Ireland’s low corporate tax rate for three reasons. First, it shows that good tax policy generates positive economic outcomes as per-capita GDP in Ireland has grown by record amounts. Second, it shows that lower tax rates can in some cases lead to more revenue. Sort of a turbo-charged version of […]
Ireland: Good Corporate Tax Policy vs. Bad Government Spending Policy
09 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, economic growth, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - USA, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
Other than Art Laffer, I think of myself as the world’s biggest advocate of the Laffer Curve. I’ve literally written hundreds of columns explaining and promoting the concept. My goal is to help people understand that there is not a linear relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. Why is this the case? Because when […]
Goldilocks and the Laffer Curve
05 Feb 2025 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality
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 […]
By 2025 we were supposed to have closed the gap
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