Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
28 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of love and marriage, gender, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality, transport economics Tags: asymmetric marriage premium, commuting times, compensating differentials, female labour force participation, gender gap, gender wage gap
The first three bars in each cluster of bars are for men. in almost all countries mothers with dependent children spend less time commuting than childless women. This might suggest that working mothers have found workplaces closer to home than women without children. The gender gap in commuting where it is present in the country is larger than the gap between mothers and other women in their commuting time.
Source: OECD Family Database – OECD, Table LMF2.6.A.
26 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, transport economics Tags: Concorde
26 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, politics - New Zealand, technological progress, transport economics Tags: drones
14 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
A platform for public participation in and discussion of the human perspective on machine-made moral decisions.
Source: Moral Machine
21 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in transport economics Tags: creative destruction
16 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, transport economics Tags: Darwin awards, road safety, Russia
14 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, environmental economics, politics - New Zealand, transport economics, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply, New Zealand Greens, New Zealand Labour Party, NIMBYs
There has been an unexpected outbreak of political courage on the left of New Zealand politics.
The Labour Party wants to crash housing prices by not only abolishing the Auckland urban limit, but ensuring councils can fund the necessary infrastructure to bring new land to the market:
Labour will remove the Auckland urban growth boundary and free up density controls. This will give Auckland more options to grow, as well as stopping land bankers profiteering and holding up development. New developments, both in Auckland and the rest of New Zealand, will be funded through innovative infrastructure bonds.
In response, the Greens want to take on the inner city NIMBYs by greatly increasing housing density and new developments in their pristine suburbs
Like Labour, we believe that people should have a choice about where they live. But a lot of people want to live close to the central city where they work or study. That means delivering more high-quality, inner city housing options, not endless sprawling new suburbs.
It’s often easier and cheaper to revitalise central suburbs than it is to build new suburbs on the city fringes. Infrastructure for new sprawling subdivisions is very expensive.
This outbreak of courage is surprising after the resolute opposition of these parties to any reform of the Resource Management Act to loosen up the land supply.
It is a breakthrough nonetheless because at least the Labour Party admits that housing affordability is about increasing land supply by removing the Auckland urban limit.
12 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, economics of media and culture, transport economics Tags: air crashes, \
04 Jul 2016 1 Comment
in transport economics Tags: aviation safety, creative destruction, road safety, self drive cars
An astute commentator on the technology Sub-Reddit pointed out that commercial aircraft fly on autopilot but active involvement of pilots is expected. No one ever contemplates the contrary.
The autopilot on a plane has a far less challenging environment than a self driving. Planes do not have to navigate passed other planes within a fraction a second of collision, along with pedestrians and bicyclists.
Planes do not have the follow hyper-accurate maps and turn and swerve almost continuously to avoid a collision as distinct from turbulence or an error that is quickly corrected by pilot before any danger is encountered.
As far as self drive cars will go, I think they will be confined to driver assist functions with a driver always having to have his hands on the wheel.
A peculiarity of self drive cars is the brand name of Googleand Tesla are so strong that they have been able to hold off the usual Luddite reaction to new technologies.
12 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, economics of media and culture, transport economics Tags: road safety, self-driving cars
11 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of bureaucracy, environmental economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, transport economics, urban economics Tags: cost benefit analysis, KiwiRail, New Zealand Green Party, road pricing
I just wrote an op-ed for National Business Review online (pay-walled) agreeing with an op-ed last week by Green MP Julie Anne Genter on transport investment. My op-ed started
The Taxpayers’ Union welcomes the commitment of the Green Party yesterday to evaluating transport investments without any bias or favouritism to one transport mode over another.
The Taxpayers’ Union could not agree more with Julie Anne Genter when she said that the question ministers should always ask is “what is the best investment we can make?”
This op-ed was my rejoinder to her reply to my op-ed criticising a recent Green Party on national freight policy. That policy called for 25% of all freight by kilometres travelled to each go by rail and road. That would near double their freight market share from 30% currently to 50% when measured by kilometre.
For my troubles I got nothing but criticism and accusations in the comments section in National Business Review Online. A tweet by Genter was far more gracious.
There was no praise in the comment section at the National Business Review online for agreeing with the Green policy. In the first comment I was told I did not understand economics and that
When the policy default is “cut taxes and spending and let me selfishly keep my money” they miss out on the much larger benefit to everyone, including themselves, by nudging or economy to spend more on intrinsically more efficient transport – like rail – and less on alternatives.
No thanks at all for agreeing that transport investments should be the best we can make. After saying that in their recent freight policy, the Greens set targets were specific transport technologies they favour, which are rail and sea freight.
You cannot argue that transport investments should be the best we can make then declare a preference for a particular technology or mode of transport. But let us not quibble over that glaring contradiction.
The broader principle was agreed which is transport investments should be driven by cost benefit analysis and value for money. It should be technology neutral and transport mode neutral. That, of course, means the Greens cannot declare targets for the market shares of particular modes of freight shipment if they want to follow their own policy about value for money.
02 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, entrepreneurship, transport economics Tags: budget airlines, entrepreneurial alertness
02 Jun 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, transport economics Tags: celebrity technologies, expressive voting, KiwiRail, network economics, picking losers, picking winners, rational irrationality, urban transport
$5.2 billion in rail spending since the 2003 budget! This $5.2 billion does not include any spending on urban rail, commuter train networks or their electrification. The $5.2 billion since the 2003 budget is for the passenger and freight network, not the urban metro contracts
Source: New Zealand Budget Papers, various years.
Desperately waiting for that dividend the taxpayers lose if any of these assets are privatised. The spending listed below in the two charts includes loans, capital injections and the purchase of the track and of the train operator itself. The latter was purchased for $690 million which was soon written down to zero.
Source: New Zealand Budget Papers, various years.
There is no table because the table format breaks down when blogged.
At various times, OnTrack and KiwiRail was subsidiaries of the New Zealand Railways Corporation, which was the holding company. Now OnTrack is a division of KiwiRail.
01 Jun 2016 1 Comment
in transport economics Tags: bicycles, club goods, network goods, road safety
In heavy rain last night, the bike ahead of us with no lights decided to merge into the blind-spot of another car also merging into the central lane. He lived through no good management of his own.
This bicyclist with no lights then joined a pack of three others to slow the traffic down behind them. Only one of the four bicyclists had any lighting or reflective material at all.
They moved in a pack, so the cars including ours could not get around them because the traffic was heavy. Fortunately, the street was well lit so you could see them, just. Bikes must go.
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