Amish man caught on video skiing behind a horse and buggy
05 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture
Most of the gender gap is biological
05 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in discrimination, gender Tags: evolutionary psychology
Can @Oxfamnz explain what institutions and policies underwrote this Great Escape
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth miracles Tags: The Great Escape
David Friedman – Trying to stop Global Warming may not be the solution
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, David Friedman, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming
Physics, Engineering Design and the X-57 Maxwell Electric Airplane
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, transport economics
Banking crises are not bolts from the blue
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
The Herald’s economics columnist Brian Fallow devoted his column last Friday to the Reserve Bank’s proposal to massively increase the proportion of their balance sheets banks would have to fund by equity. He ended on what seemed to be a moderately sceptical note.
So we are left trying to weigh a highly debatable but significant cost against an incalculable benefit.
As I’ve noted here, the sort of cost-benefit calculus we can glean from various Reserve Bank publications just doesn’t stack up at all. In his speech the other day (which a couple of readers have suggested I was too generous towards), the Deputy Governor indicated that the level of GDP might be up to 0.3 per cent lower (permanently) as a result of these change. Call it an annual insurance premium of 0.25 per cent of GDP (and bear in mind that the estimates Bascand is using don’t…
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10 Strange Crimes Committed By Diplomats
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, International law, law and economics, politics - USA, property rights
The Coase Theorem
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, environmental economics, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights, Ronald Coase Tags: Coase theorem
Unresolved biology question of the day: Why do cats sprint out of the litter box?
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
Not all cats do this, but many of them do. After defecating, a cat will exit the litter box on the gallop, sometimes running like crazy around the house. (They don’t seem to do it after urinating.) Some of mine did it, too, and I’ve seen this behavior in many other cats. But why? There are many reasons given and many sites purporting to answer this vexing question (see here and here, for instance), but most of them don’t satisfy me. Perhaps there is a panoply of explanations, each of which might apply for some cats or some post-poop dashes, but I think the phenomenon is so general that there has to be an overarching explanation.
To show you how it looks, I wanted to put a YouTube video of the phenomenon here, and I was certain there would be one (after all, it’s the Internet and cats). But…
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Is the scientific method mostly about what you miss seeing?
04 Mar 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture Tags: philosophy of science
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