Environmental Levies To Cost £108 Billion By 2029/30

By Paul Homewood   The OBR is very explicit about the new budget!! Spending up by £70 billion (so much for “black holes”!), tax up by £36 billion and borrowing by £32 billion.   https://obr.uk/ But the bit we are concerned with is their updated projections for Environmental Levies, aka subsidies for renewable energy.

Environmental Levies To Cost £108 Billion By 2029/30

Biden-Harris policies and their consequences were no surprise to those paying attention

Milton Friedman used to advise researchers to focus on large policy changes rather than attempting to separate a small change’s signal from the noise. In this sense, the “ambitious” policy agenda of the Biden-Harris administration was expected to be a gift to the research community. Accepting this gift, since 2020 I have been making forecasts…

Biden-Harris policies and their consequences were no surprise to those paying attention

Canada Is Part of the Anti-Convergence Club

Economists widely agree with the theory of “convergence,” which is the (mostly true) idea that poor nations should grow faster than rich nations as they catch up (converge). But there are exceptions. Sometimes a richer country will grow faster than a poorer country over a significant period of time, and we can learn from these examples. This is […]

Canada Is Part of the Anti-Convergence Club

Another zero lower bound prediction bites the dust

Popular New Keynesian macroeconomic models predict that cuts in various types of distortionary taxes are contractionary when monetary policy is constrained at the zero lower bound. We turn to a long span of history in the United Kingdom to test this hypothesis. Using a new long-run dataset of narrative-identified tax changes from 1918to 2020, we […]

Another zero lower bound prediction bites the dust

Proof that NZ’s Reserve Bank has Inflicted Unnecessary Pain up and down the Nation.

In the past few hours, it has been stated that the US economy grew at a solid 3% rate last quarter, as given in the American government’s final estimate. New Zealand’s economy, on the other hand, shrank at a rate of -0.2%. The US Federal Funds rate (the equivalent of NZ’s Official Cash Rate, OCR)…

Proof that NZ’s Reserve Bank has Inflicted Unnecessary Pain up and down the Nation.

Debunking Hate-and-Envy Tax Policy

On tax policy, our friends on the left are motivated by envy and hatred. As shown in this Stossel video, Robert Reich is a sad example of this mindset. John Stossel understates his argument. It’s not that Reich is wrong. He’s wildly wrong. There are four points in the video that deserve attention. It is […]

Debunking Hate-and-Envy Tax Policy

The Economic Consequences of the French Wealth Tax

By Eric Pichet, here is the abstract: Despite attempts to ‘unwind’ the Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune (‘Solidarity Wealth Tax,’ the French wealth tax) during the last legislature (2002-2007), ISF yields had soared by 2006, jumping from €2.5 billion in 2002 to €3.6 billion. Analysis of the economic consequences of this ISF wealth tax […]

The Economic Consequences of the French Wealth Tax

Tax-Motivated Domestic Migration

I’m a big fan of tax competition. I cheer when jobs, investment, and people (or even booze) move from high-tax jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions. This increases the rewards for good policy and also increases the punishment for bad policy. Given my interest in the topic, I obviously can’t resist sharing this chart, which shows the […]

Tax-Motivated Domestic Migration

The Santa Claus Election

For libertarians, this is a very depressing election (a feeling we tend to have every four years, so a familiar experience). What basically happens is that two politicians try to bribe us with our own money. This year, we have Kamala Harris, who was even worse than Bernie Sanders in the big-spender contest. And we […]

The Santa Claus Election

Recovering from New Zealand’s worst ever economic decision: The cancellation of the Kirk Government’s superannuation scheme

EEconomists wonder about the “New Zealand paradox”, which is that New Zealand under-performs economically given its policies, institutions, natural resources, educated people, and compliance with trade and other multi-lateral agreements. Our economic reforms from the mid-1980s and on were textbook economic theory and yet the real-world results disappointed.  However, New Zealand has different policy settings […]

Recovering from New Zealand’s worst ever economic decision: The cancellation of the Kirk Government’s superannuation scheme

Interview with Greg Mankiw: New Keynesian Macro, Growth, and Economic Policy

Jon Hartley interviews Greg Mankiw on topics including New Keynesian macroeconomics, growth, and economic policy more broadly at his Capitalism and Freedom website (August 20, 2024, video and transcript available). Here are a few of the comments that caught my eye. On big models and small models in studying the macroeconomy: [O]n the issue of…

Interview with Greg Mankiw: New Keynesian Macro, Growth, and Economic Policy

Fiscal and monetary policy

Over the last few years, The Treasury seems to have been toying with bidding for a more significant role for fiscal policy as a countercyclical stabilisation tool It seemed to start when Covid hubris still held sway – didn’t we do well? – and the first we saw of it in public was at a […]

Fiscal and monetary policy

Minnesota’s Failed Class-Warfare Tax Policy

Writing about Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan in 2012, I opined that, “…it probably means nothing. I don’t think there’s been an election in my lifetime that was impacted by the second person on a presidential ticket.” I feel the same way about Tim Walz, who is Kamala Harris’ pick for Vice President. But […]

Minnesota’s Failed Class-Warfare Tax Policy

Treasury says one thing in a speech but quite another in the BEFU

I picked up The Post this morning to find the lead story headlined “Recession hits homes harder than businesses”, reporting a speech given earlier this week by Treasury’s deputy secretary and chief economic adviser Dominick Stephens. There was an account of the same speech, but with some different material, on BusinessDesk a couple of days […]

Treasury says one thing in a speech but quite another in the BEFU

Current state of knowledge on the Trump tax cuts

That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column.  Here is one summary excerpt: One result: Total tangible corporate investment went up by about 11%. That has been a welcome shot in the arm for an economy that was by some measures suffering from an investment drought. The strong state of the Biden economy may, in…

Current state of knowledge on the Trump tax cuts

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