Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
25 Aug 2025 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, fiscal policy, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: economics of pandemics, monetary policy
I got home from Papua New Guinea at 1:30 on Saturday morning and by 3:30 yesterday afternoon I’d finished Grant Robertson’s new book, Anything Could Happen, and in between I’d been to two film festival movies, a 60th birthday party, and church. It is that sort of book, a pretty easy read. In some respects, […]
Reading Grant Robertson
23 Aug 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics Tags: European Union
WSJ: Europe is Losing Europeans live longer, have more leisure time and less income inequality, and often live in stunning cities and towns built over the centuries. But increasingly, Americans enjoy a higher standard of living. They have over 50% more living space on average per person. More than four in five Americans have air…
Why is Europe Falling Behind?
19 Aug 2025 Leave a comment
in economic growth, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, wealth tax
Roger Partridge writes – The Greens’ coronation of Chlöe Swarbrick at last weekend’s AGM delivered a manifesto for economic transformation that would make Soviet economists nostalgic for their glory days.
The Greens’ weekend gift to the government
17 Aug 2025 1 Comment
in development economics, economic growth, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, growth disasters, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, monetary economics, property rights, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking, unemployment Tags: Argentina
I’m back in Argentina, the South American country with the world’s best leader. What Javier Milei has accomplished is amazing. And the economic effects have been wonderful. One of my meetings earlier this week was with Marcelo Elizondo, the head of the International Chamber of Commerce for Argentina. He shared a presentation with me that […]
Milei’s Achievements…and Challenges
14 Aug 2025 Leave a comment
in fiscal policy, health economics, income redistribution, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics Tags: economics of pandemics
The Herald reports: A new Treasury paper has criticised the last Government for overspending during the pandemic, leaving the country with a high level of public debt that makes it vulnerable to future shocks. The paper calculated the total cost of the pandemic at about $66 billion. It put the total fiscal contribution to the […]
Treasury states what we all knew
05 Aug 2025 1 Comment
in economics of bureaucracy, fiscal policy, politics - USA, Public Choice
Regular readers know I’m not a Trumpie. Some of his policies are terrible (protectionism), while others are irresponsible (punting on entitlements) or misguided (new tax loopholes). But I have to give credit where credit is due. Unlike every other Republican president over the past six decades – including the great Ronald Reagan – Donald Trump […]
A Small But Important Victory for Taxpayers
02 Aug 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, fiscal policy, labour economics, macroeconomics, public economics Tags: taxation and investment
The Laffer Curve provides incredibly important insights about tax policy. Most important, it informs us that you don’t measure the revenue impact of tax policy changes merely by looking at what is happening to tax rates. You also have to consider whether changes in tax rates will alter incentives to earn and report income. Or, […]
The Laffer Curve Triumphs Again: Class Warfare in the United Kingdom Backfires
27 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic growth, macroeconomics, politics - USA Tags: forecasting errors
Here is a recent paper by Benjamin S. Kay, Aeimit Lakdawala, and Jane Ryngaert: Using a novel dataset linking professional forecasters in the Wall Street Journal Economic Forecasting Survey to their political affiliations, we document a partisan bias in GDP growth forecasts. Republican-affiliated forecasters project 0.3-0.4 percentage points higher growth when Republicans hold the presidency, […]
Partisan Bias in Professional Macroeconomic Forecasts
26 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, development economics, Federalism, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: Spain
Jesús details how Spain already operates one of the most decentralized fiscal systems in the world, “more latitude than most U.S. states,” he notes, yet Catalonia now seeks the bespoke privileges long enjoyed by the Basque Country and Navarra. The Regional Authority Index rates how much self‑rule and shared rule each country’s sub‑national governments actually wield. In its last […]
Should Catalonia receive more financial independence?
23 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, fiscal policy, growth disasters, growth miracles, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, property rights Tags: Argentina
I almost feel sorry for the 108 leftist economists who predicted back in 2023 that Argentina would suffer if Javier Milei won the presidential election. Not only were they disappointed when he enjoyed a landslide victory, but the subsequent events in Argentina have shown that they were wildly wrong (all of which is discussed in […]
The Milei Miracle, Part II
18 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic growth, economic history, growth disasters, international economics, law and economics, macroeconomics, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, resource economics Tags: Portugal, resources curse
By Davis Kedrosky and Nuno Palma. Published in The Journal of Economic History.In the book The Economics of Macro Issues which I used as a supplemental text, they mention that Russia has many resources but its per capita income is less than that of Luxembourg which has few resources. The book suggests that the economic…
The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal (due to the resource curse)
11 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, fiscal policy, gender, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: gender wage gap, pay equity, sex discrimination
Michael Johnston writes – The way the government went about rolling back 33 pay equity claims lodged under the last government’s Pay Equity legislation was clumsy at best. The changes were made under urgency and applied retrospectively. It was not a good look. Predictable howls of rage and furious accusations ensued. Critics say the government […]
Govt fiscal constraints are the elephant in the pay equity room
04 Jul 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - USA
In the long run, a rising standard of living is always and everywhere based on productivity growth. Thus, Austan Goolsbee notedin a keynote address at the “Summit” conference held at the Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) in February (“Remarks on Productivity Growth and Monetary Policy,” February 28, 2025): As Goolsbee notes, annual productivity…
The Weird and Lovely Surge of US Productivity Growth
30 Jun 2025 1 Comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, fiscal policy, global warming Tags: solar power, wind power
The Senate dealt a series of blows to solar and wind energy in the latest version of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” bill — taking a page out of House Republicans’ playbook to crack down on green energy tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden.
‘Outright Massacre’: Senate GOP Takes Sledgehammer To Biden’s Green Energy Subsidies
30 Jun 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economics of education, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, monetary economics Tags: cranks, monetary policy
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) had a real moment in the spotlight in the late 2010s, with political support in the US from Presidential hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. However, mainstream economists mostly didn’t understand it, or ridiculed it, or both. I mostly ignored the detail of it, only picking up what I knew about it from…
Greg Mankiw on Modern Monetary Theory
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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