It took Japan a long time to realize that the 1970s drop in fertility wasn’t temporary
06 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, political change, technological progress Tags: demographic crisis, demographics, fertility crisis, forecasting errors, Japan
Trends in average marginal tax rates in the USA
05 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, political change, politics - USA, public economics Tags: Marginal tax rates, tax reform, taxation and the labour supply
The war on drugs: Drug induced mortality rates compared
18 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, political change, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: drug decriminalisation, marijuana decriminalisation, Portugal, war on drugs
10 Street Drugs That Used To Be Legal
05 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, liberalism, libertarianism, political change, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: drug decriminalisation, marijuana decriminalisation
Reason for UKIP’s success?
23 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
It’s not just Ed Miliband. Labour’s on the wrong side of history » The Spectator
21 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, election campaigns, liberalism, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, political change, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, public economics, technological progress Tags: free trade, globalisation, market augmenting governments
Politicians can’t be heroes any more. Instead, they have to operate within the tightly drawn tramlines of the global economy.
This is true for those on the left and the right, but the pressure that this places on countries to adopt a low-tax, light-regulation regime is something with which the right is far more comfortable.
via It’s not just Ed Miliband. Labour’s on the wrong side of history » The Spectator.
George Stigler vindicated: Learning the Wealth of Nations
14 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, political change, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: george stigler, Leftover Left, Milton Friedman, neoliberal conspiracies, public choice, Twitter left, Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen has drawn attention to a 2011 paper on policy learning in the 1970s and 80s by Francisco J. Buera, Alexander Monge-Narajo, and Giorgio E. Primiceri was published in Econometrica in 2011. Their paper found that:
1. Policymakers have priors about how good the market economy is, and they revise those views — and thus revise policy — as they observe their own growth results and those of their neighbors.
2. A simple learning model predicts about 97% of the policy choices observed in the data. The model accounts for more than 77% of the observed policy switches over a three-year time window.
3. Evolving beliefs — and not just the fixed demographic characteristics of countries — are critical for understanding policy decisions.
4. It was probably the growth collapse of the late 1970s for interventionist countries which led to a greater reliance on markets.
5. Adjustment toward better-performing policies is often quite slow. In part this is because policymakers attribute the superior performance of other countries to heterogeneity rather than policy per se.
This record of politicians learning from failure and success at home and abroad is a vindication of George Stigler’s views of the relative unimportance of economists in influencing public policy.
There was no neoliberal conspiracy that captured the hearts and minds of politicians through mass hypnosis in the 1970s and 1980s as both the Left over Left and the Twitter Left like to suggest
The policies of Friedman had to wait, as George Stigler predicted, for a market to develop among interest groups and the voting public. Once that market developed, Milton Friedman, FA Hayek and others looked like leaders of an opinion.
A few years earlier, Friedman and Hayek were just angry men in the wilderness.
The reason for this sudden change in their public profile and purported influence on the shape the course of public policy in th 1970s and 1980s onwards was political parties were yet to conclude that the existing policy regime had failed irretrievably, and that the successes of neighbours on economic reform might be worth imitating locally.
Once politicians, the voting public and interest groups concluded that new solutions are needed, just as Stigler predicted, the ideas for reform been around for a long time came to the front.
via http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/11/learning-the-wealth-of-nations.html
In the 1950s, George Stigler wanted to break up US steel because it had too much market power
15 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, George Stigler, industrial organisation, political change Tags: george stigler, The pretence to knowledge
HT: David Henderson
Great British Class Survey finds seven social classes in UK | Society | The Guardian
20 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in human capital, labour economics, liberalism, political change, politics Tags: new class
Sitcom guide to the new classes
Elite: General Melchett from Blackadder Goes Fourth. Braying, bellowing, incompetent and utterly contemptuous of the lower orders, Melchett would naturally expect to find himself at the top of the pecking order.
Established middle class: Margot and Jerry Leadbetter from The Good Life. As the establishment pillars of comfortable and conservative 1970s suburban society, the couple existed in pointed contrast to their more free-thinking neighbours Tom and Barbara Good.
Technical middle class: David Brent from The Office. Despite his supposedly rock’n’roll past, Ricky Gervais’s fist-gnawingly embarrassing general manager was resolutely middle class.
New affluent workers: Miranda from Miranda. Miranda Hart herself may be established middle class, but the heroine of her eponymous sitcom sits comfortably in a slightly lower category.
Traditional working class: Jim Royle from The Royle Family. Could Ricky Tomlinson’s armchair-bound, TV-addicted patriarch be anything other than proudly working class? My arse!
Emergent service workers: Maurice Moss from the IT Crowd. Young, nerdish and living at home with his mum, Moss could fit the emergent service worker class but probably needs a little work to increase his social and cultural capital levels.
Precariat: Rab C Nesbitt. Gregor Fisher’s much-loved and enduring sitcom creation has assumed the status of folk hero despite his resolutely unglamorous life.
The Full class topology is:
- Elite – the most privileged group in the UK, distinct from the other six classes through its wealth. This group has the highest levels of all three capitals
- Established middle class – the second wealthiest, scoring highly on all three capitals. The largest and most gregarious group, scoring second highest for cultural capital
- Technical middle class – a small, distinctive new class group which is prosperous but scores low for social and cultural capital. Distinguished by its social isolation and cultural apathy
- New affluent workers – a young class group which is socially and culturally active, with middling levels of economic capital
- Traditional working class – scores low on all forms of capital, but is not completely deprived. Its members have reasonably high house values, explained by this group having the oldest average age at 66
- Emergent service workers – a new, young, urban group which is relatively poor but has high social and cultural capital
- Precariat, or precarious proletariat – the poorest, most deprived class, scoring low for social and cultural capital
via Great British Class Survey finds seven social classes in UK | Society | The Guardian.
What is a useful idiot?
06 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, liberalism, political change, politics, war and peace Tags: bootleggers and baptists, environmentalists, Leftover Left, New Left, Old Left, political manipulation, propaganda, useful idiots
Useful idiot is a term for people perceived as propagandists, initially Lenin, for a cause whose goals they are not fully aware of, and who are used cynically by the leaders of the cause.
Many confused and misguided sympathisers will unwittingly support a malignant cause which they naïvely believe to be a force for good.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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