Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
07 Jun 2015 1 Comment
in labour economics, minimum wage, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, population economics, poverty and inequality, welfare reform Tags: earned income tax credit, poverty traps, single parents, taxation and the labour supply, welfare state
Figure 1: Weekly working hours needed at minimum-wage to move above a 50% relative poverty line after taxes, mandatory social or private contributions payable by workers, and family benefits for lone parent with two children, Anglo-Saxon countries, 2013
07 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: economics of migration, taxation and the labour supply
#Braindrain is real, even quantifiable — as per NBER paper 21024. Geniuses don't tolerate extra taxes easily. http://t.co/HVP8uEFAfz—
Amity Shlaes (@AmityShlaes) June 07, 2015
05 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of education, politics - New Zealand Tags: education spending, Finland, Iceland, Nordic countries, Norway, Scandinavia, Sweden, teacher pay
04 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in economics, labour economics, occupational choice, personnel economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: academic bias, voter demographics
Verdant Labs published charts on the average political affiliations of various professions. Data from the Federal Election Commission on contributions to political parties was used that information as a proxy for political views. The ratios are Democrats (blue) vs. Republicans (red).
via Chart: The most liberal and conservative jobs in America – The Washington Post.
04 Jun 2015 3 Comments
in economic growth, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics
Bill English’s 2015 New Zealand Budget foreshadows a $1.5 billion allowance in the 2017 budget for “modest tax cuts”. Any reasonable mock-up of these tax cuts, such as in table 1 using the numbers on the Treasury website for revenue losses for small tax changes show that Prime Minster Key is planning his own fistful of dollars in the lead up to the 2017 election.
Table 1: hypothetical 2017 National Party tax cuts, $1.5 billion
| Current tax rate | New tax rate | Revenue loss, static scoring |
Revenue loss, dynamic scoring |
| 33% | 31.5% | $323m | $274m |
| 30% | 27.5% | $388m | $329.4m |
| 17.5% | 16.5% | $505m | $429.3m |
| Trust tax 33% | Trust tax 31.5% | $135m | $129m |
| Company tax rate 28% | 27.5% | $113m | $90m |
| Total cost | $1.465b | $1251m |
No serious participant in public policy debate could suggest that tax cuts of the size in table 1 will not have incentive effects that will lead to growth in incomes and business profits. There will be offsetting tax revenue increases that make a more ambitious tax package possible in 2017.
The Treasury’s website on revenue losses forecasts that a 1% increase in wages growth will increase tax revenue by $300 million. A 1% increase in the growth rate of taxable business profits will increase tax revenues by $140 million again according to the Treasury. These are big differences.
Any sensible discussion of the 2017 tax cuts should be against a background of what is called dynamic scoring to use the American parlance.
When the NZ Treasury “scores” revenue losses from tax cuts on its website, its estimates of revenue changes assume no changes in behaviour. Dynamic scoring takes behavioural effects into account.
The Congressional Budget Office was recently required to use dynamic scoring when costing major tax policy proposals. New Zealand should follow this path.
Table 2 makes conservative assumptions about the behavioural effects of income tax cuts. I follow Mankiw, N. Gregory and Matthew Weinzierl “Dynamic Scoring: A Back-of-the-Envelope Guide,” Journal of Public Economics (September 2006): 1415-1433. They argue that, in the long run, about 17% of a cut in individual income taxes is recouped through higher economic growth. For a cut in company taxes, their figure is 50%. I assume 15% is recouped in this way for individuals, 20% for companies and 5% for trusts.
Table 2: hypothetical 2017 National Party tax cuts, $1.5 billion, dynamic scoring of revenue effects
| Current tax rate | New tax rate | Revenue loss static Scoring |
Revenue loss dynamic scoring |
| 33% | 31% | $430m | $366m |
| 30% | 27% | $465m | $395m |
| 17.5% | 16.5% | $505m | $429m |
| Trust tax 33% | Trust tax 31% | $180m | $171m |
| Company tax rate 28% | 27% | $225m | $180m |
| Total cost | $1.805b | $1.541b |
The $200-300 million in revenue increases from higher incomes and higher business profits incentivised by lower tax rates is not a trivial sum. It is enough on its own to cut one percentage point of the company tax rate. Spread around as in table 2, there are enough to knock another one-half of a percentage point of the top tax rate, the second top tax rate and the company tax rate. The $1.5 billion in tax cuts planned for 2017 will be neither modest in their size nor in their behavioural effects.
No budget should be published and no party in an election should assert that large changes in the tax system have no behavioural effects. Dynamic scoring makes a big difference to what scale of tax cuts are possible.
There are practical hurdles to dynamic scoring but static scoring has more important ones. The hurdles of dynamic scoring are:
Against that is dynamic scoring removes the bias against pro-growth policies in current budgetary scoring:
[A] theoretical advantage of accurate dynamic scoring is that it is not biased against pro-growth policies compared to the current conventional scoring method. By ignoring macroeconomic effects, the conventional method overstates the true budgetary cost of pro-growth policies, such as infrastructure investments, and understates the cost of anti-growth policies.
To close on some New Zealand politics, Prime Minister Key, who is known as the smiling assassin, overtook the Labour Party and the Greens on their left In the 2015 Budget by increasing welfare benefits for the first time since 1972 in real terms, and by a large amount ($25 a week), and also increasing family tax credits.
Prime Minister Key well then pivot to the right in 2017 with a fistful of dollars to firmly camp himself over both the centre-left in the centre-right to be re-elected for a fourth term against an increasingly hapless and out-manoeuvred opposition.
03 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, labour economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, unions Tags: the withering away of the proletariat, union power, union wage premium
The economics of low wages: When what comes down doesn’t go up econ.st/1zlP1G0 http://t.co/AujgeDIAUX—
The Economist (@EconEconomics) May 02, 2015
01 Jun 2015 1 Comment
in economics of media and culture, entrepreneurship, politics - New Zealand, technological progress Tags: creative destruction, good old days
01 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
Six ways in which Qatar doesn't make a lot of sense as a World Cup host 53eig.ht/1BpVlrH #FIFA http://t.co/0N87zTO07x—
(@FiveThirtyEight) May 30, 2015
31 May 2015 1 Comment
in economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand Tags: Australia, Canada, economic geography, endogenous growth theory, lost decades
Figure 1 shows that Canada has been diverging from Australia in real GDP per working age person since the mid-1990s particularly since the global financial crisis.
Figure 1: Real GDP per New Zealander, Canadian and Australian aged 15-64, converted to 2013 price level with updated 2005 EKS purchasing power parities, 1956-2013
Source: Computed from OECD StatExtract and The Conference Board, Total Database, January 2014, http://www.conference-board.org/economics
In common with New Zealand, Figure 2 shows that Canadian productivity has been in a pretty much along declines is about 1974, rarely catching up with any lost ground. Figure 1 shows that Canada used to be richer than Australia but is now poorer than Australia. Figure 2 is real GDP growth data detrended by the growth rate of the USA in the 20th century. A flat line in figure 2 is annual real GDP growth at 1.9%; a rising line is growth above 1.9%; a falling line is annual growth below 1.9% a year.
Figure 2: Real GDP per New Zealander, Canadian and Australian aged 15-64, converted to 2013 price level with updated 2005 EKS purchasing power parities, 1.9 per cent detrended, 1956-2013
Source: Computed from OECD StatExtract and The Conference Board, Total Database, January 2014, http://www.conference-board.org/economics
Figure 2 shows that Canadian productivity has been below trend for perhaps 30 years. There has been the occasional recovery but followed by a further decline. If Canadian labour productivity had grown at the same rate as the USA since 1974, labour productivity in Canada is something like 18% better.
Australia, as shown in figure 2, has neither caught up nor falling behind the USA in labour productivity for the entire post-war period since 1956. Canada has been falling behind its neighbour most markedly since the mid-1970s.
The proximate causes of the Canadian productivity gap with the USA have a familiar echo to New Zealand ears. Relative to the USA, Rao et al. (2006) and Sharp (2003) attributed the gap to less capital per worker, an innovation gap as shown by lower R&D expenditure, a smaller and less dynamic high technology sector, less developed human capital at the top end of the labour market, and more limited scale and scope economies.
These factors have been put forward, at one time or another, as the proximate causes of the New Zealand productivity gap with the USA. Identifying the barriers to higher Canadian productivity may offer fresh insights into removing similar productivity barriers in New Zealand.
Canada, New Zealand and Australia should be catching-up with the USA in productivity per capita because copying the global leader is cheaper than innovation. Canada, New Zealand and Australia all have the basics to do this: a market economy, the rule of law and openness to foreign technology and international trade.
Instead of asking why New Zealand is not catching-up with Australian productivity, further study of the lack of productivity catch-up of Australia and Canada with the USA may uncover subtle barriers to productivity growth with similarities in New Zealand.
The productivity decline in Canada is of interest in New Zealand because Canada certainly cannot blame remoteness because it borders the USA. Canada cannot blame lack of size because it is noticeably larger than Australia and certainly New Zealand.
30 May 2015 Leave a comment
People in Britain who bothered to vote: on the whole, as @NickCohen4 points out, fairly Right-wing http://t.co/BFYRBVnray—
Michael Deacon (@MichaelPDeacon) May 30, 2015
30 May 2015 Leave a comment
in politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: expressive voting, James Shaw, New Zealand Greens, New Zealand Labour Party, rational ignorance, rational irrationality, swinging voter, tactical voting, vote parking
The New Zealand Greens have elected a new male co-leader. James Shaw is a first term MP who is supposed to consolidate and build the green vote from 10%. At the last election, the Greens were targeting a 15% party vote. Their vote fell from 11.1% to 10.7%.
I doubt that he can do it because much of the improvement of the Green vote since the 2005 election has been an expense of the Labour Party.
The Green vote was pretty sickly at 5-7% when the Labour Party was popular in government between 1999 and 2005. In the 2005 election, the Greens failed to reach the 5% party vote threshold necessary to win seats in Parliament on election night. It was only saved by absentee and postal votes that pushed its party vote up to 5.3%.
Maybe 30% of the Green vote, perhaps more, is made up of disgruntled Labour Party voters awaiting the call home. These disgruntled Labour voters will vote for the Labour Party again when it is fit for government.
Once there is a Labour–Green government in New Zealand, the Green vote faces the recurring theme that green parties lose a substantial part of their vote whenever they get into government such as happened federally in Australia and in Tasmania.
If the Greens go into government with about 7% of the party vote in the 2017 or 2020 New Zealand general elections, the Greens face the real prospect of of being voted out of Parliament completely in the 2023 New Zealand general election if their vote drops below 5%.
James Shaw happened to run for the Wellington Central electorate in the 2014 general election. He did not ask for the electorate vote in that election. Only the party vote.
Wellington Central has one of the highest green party votes in New Zealand. The Green party vote is 2000 more than Labour’s party vote in Wellington Central although the National Party won the party vote with 14,000 party votes.
Given the fact that the Greens may dropped below 5% by 2020, James Shaw would be wise to try to win Wellington Central in 2017 as a safety margin. If a party wins electorate seat under MMP, their party vote counts towards winning list MPs even if they win less than 5% of the party vote.
To add a twist to the tail, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Grant Robertson, is the sitting member for Wellington Central with a margin of 8000 votes. If the current leader of the opposition fails at his job, Grant Robertson is his natural replacement.
There’s not much room at the top of the Labour Party list for defeated electoral seat candidates because of the last election Labour’s party vote was so low that it was only eligible for five list MPs. The last of these was the current leader of the opposition prove wasn’t even elected on election night but got back into Parliament on postal and absentee votes.
To complicate Grant Robinson’s golden parachute even further, the Labour Party has a policy that 50% of its caucus should be female by 2017 and the party list should be drawn up with that gender quota in mind. Grant Robertson may be a victim of this policy if he does not win Wellington Central.
More than a few careers hinge on the election of James Shaw as male co-leader of the Greens including the very survival of his party. It would be a tight race, but James Shaw could win Wellington Central.
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30 May 2015 2 Comments
in economic history, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, public economics Tags: Australia, Canada, growth of government
The tax take is noticeably higher in Canada and New Zealand and has been for a long time.
Figure 1: US, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, 1965–2013
Source: OECD StatExtract.
30 May 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, entrepreneurship, growth disasters, growth miracles, income redistribution, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: entrepreneurial alertness, Leftover Left, taxes and the labour supply, The inequality and growth, Thomas Piketty, top 1%, Twitter left
Tim Taylor, the editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, has written a superb blog post on why we should be sceptical about a strong relationship between inequality and economic growth. Taylor was writing in response to the OECD’s recent report "In It Together: Why Less Inequality Benefits All,".
Taylor’s basic point is economists have enough trouble working out what causes economic growth so trawling within that subset of causes to quantify the effects of rising or falling inequality inequality seems to be torturing the data to confess. The empirical literature is simply inconclusive as Taylor says:
A variety of studies have undertaken to prove a connection from inequality to slower growth, but a full reading of the available evidence is that the evidence on this connection is inconclusive.
Most discussions of the link between inequality and growth are notoriously poor of theories connecting two. There are three credible theories in all listed in the OECD’s report:
The report first points out (pp. 60-61 that as a matter of theory, one can think up arguments why greater inequality might be associated with less growth, or might be associated with more growth. For example, inequality could result less growth if:
1) People become upset about rising inequality and react by demanding regulations and redistributions that slow down the ability of an economy to produce growth;
2) A high degree of persistent inequality will limit the ability and incentives of those in the lower part of the income distribution to obtain more education and job experience; or
3) It may be that development and widespread adoption of new technologies requires demand from a broad middle class, and greater inequality could limit the extent of the middle class.
About the best theoretical link between inequality and economic growth is what Taylor calls the "frustrated people killing the goose that lays the golden eggs." Excessive inequality within a society results in predatory government reactions at the behest of left-wing or right-wing populists.
Taylor refers to killing the goose that laid the golden egg as dysfunctional societal and government responses to inequality. He is right but that is not how responses to inequality based on higher taxes and more regulation are sold. Thomas Piketty is quite open about he wants a top tax rate of 83% and a global wealth tax to put an end to high incomes:
When a government taxes a certain level of income or inheritance at a rate of 70 or 80 percent, the primary goal is obviously not to raise additional revenue (because these very high brackets never yield much).
It is rather to put an end to such incomes and large estates, which lawmakers have for one reason or another come to regard as socially unacceptable and economically unproductive…
The left-wing parties don’t say let’s put up taxes and redistribute so that is not something worse and more destructive down the road. Their argument is redistribution will increase growth or at least not harm it. That assumes the Left is addressing this issue of not killing the goose that lays the golden egg at all.
Once you discuss the relationship between inequality and growth in any sensible way you must remember your John Rawls. Incentives encourage people to work, save and invest and channels them into the occupations where they make the most of their talents. Taylor explains:
In the other side, inequality could in theory be associated with faster economic growth if: 1) Higher inequality provides greater incentives for people to get educated, work harder, and take risks, which could lead to innovations that boost growth; 2) Those with high incomes tend to save more, and so an unequal distribution of income will tend to have more high savers, which in turn spurs capital accumulation in the economy.
Taylor also points out that the OECD’s report is seriously incomplete by any standards because it fails to mention that inequality initially increases in any poor country undergoing economic development:
The report doesn’t mention a third hypothesis that seems relevant in a number of developing economies, which is that fast growth may first emerge in certain regions or industries, leading to greater inequality for a time, before the gains from that growth diffuse more widely across the economy.
At a point in its report, the OECD owns up to the inconclusive connection between economic growth and rising inequality as Taylor notes:
The large empirical literature attempting to summarize the direction in which inequality affects growth is summarised in the literature review in Cingano (2014, Annex II).
That survey highlights that there is no consensus on the sign and strength of the relationship; furthermore, few works seek to identify which of the possible theoretical effects is at work. This is partly tradeable to the multiple empirical challenges facing this literature.
The OECD’s report responds to this inclusiveness by setting out an inventory of tools with which you can torture the data to confess to what you want as Taylor notes:
There’s an old saying that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," in other words, the fact that the existing evidence doesn’t firmly show a connection from greater inequality to slower growth is not proof that such a connection doesn’t exist.
But anyone who has looked at economic studies on the determinants of economic growth knows that the problem of finding out what influences growth is very difficult, and the solutions aren’t always obvious.
The chosen theory of the OECD about the connection between inequality and economic growth is inequality leads to less investment in human capital at the bottom part of the income distribution.
[Inequality] tends to drag down GDP growth, due to the rising distance of the lower 40% from the rest of society. Lower income people have been prevented from realising their human capital potential, which is bad for the economy as a whole
I found this choice of explanation curious. So did Taylor as the problem already seems to have been solved:
There are a few common patterns in economic growth. All high-income countries have near-universal K-12 public education to build up human capital, along with encouragement of higher education. All high-income countries have economies where most jobs are interrelated with private and public capital investment, thus leading to higher productivity and wages.
All high-income economies are relatively open to foreign trade. In addition, high-growth economies are societies that are willing to allow and even encourage a reasonable amount of disruption to existing patterns of jobs, consumption, and ownership. After all, economic growth means change.
In New Zealand, interest free student loans are available to invest in higher education as well as living allowances for those with parents on a low income. There are countries in Europe with low levels of investment in higher education but that’s because of high income taxes not because of inequality.
The OECD’s report is fundamentally flawed which is disappointing because most research from the OECD is to a good standard.
via CONVERSABLE ECONOMIST: Does Inequality Reduce Economic Growth: A Skeptical View.
29 May 2015 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice Tags: citizen initiated referendums, Colin Craig, Conservative Party, Edmund Burke, expressive voting, Joseph Schumpeter, parliamentary sovereignty, rational ignorance, rational irrationality
The Conservative Party of New Zealand in the 2014 general election was very much formed around the notion of introducing citizen initiated binding referendums in a country with the Parliament is sovereign. The first referendum is likely to be on one of the following:
· decriminalising marijuana,
· banning smoking,
· voluntary euthanasia,
· a living wage,
· life means life in prison,
· same-sex marriages,
· marriage is between a man and a woman,
· entrenching the Treaty of Waitangi,
· abolishing the Maori seats,
· entrenching the Maori seats,
· stop school closures, and
· capital punishment; and
· future referendums not be binding
Binding referenda are unworkable. Parliament can’t amend them later as we learn from the implementation of the law and unintended consequences arise. Every new law is riddled with unintended consequences and blow-backs.
Do you really want to have to have another referendum to undo a binding referendum that turned out to be a bit of a mistake? One of the few redeeming features of the Parliament that is sovereign – a parliament for can make or unmake any law whatsoever – is it can repeal its mistakes quickly.
The first citizens initiated referendum was held on 2 December 1995. The question was
Should the number of professional fire-fighters employed full-time in the New Zealand Fire Service be reduced below the number employed in 1 January 1995?
Turnout was low as the referendum was not held in conjunction with a general election, and the measure was voted down easily, with just over 12% voting “Yes” and almost 88% voting “No”.
The key to constitutional design is not empowering you and yours – it is how to restrain those crazies to the Left or the Right of you, as the case may be, when they get their hands on the levers of power, as they surely will in three, six or nine years’ time.
The one inevitability of democracy is power rotates – unbridled power and binding referenda lose their shine when you must share that power with the opposing side of politics who put up their own referendum question.
Constitutions are brakes, not accelerators. Much of constitutional design is about checks and balances and the division of power to slow the impassioned majority down.
Constitutional constraints are basically messages from the past to the present that you must think really hard, and go through extra hurdles before you do certain things.
The 18th and 19th century classical liberals were highly sceptical about the capability and willingness of politics and politicians to further the interests of the ordinary citizen, and were of the view that the political direction of resource allocation retards rather than facilitates economic progress.
Governments were considered to be institutions to be protected from but made necessary by the elementary fact that all persons are not angels. Constitutions were to constrain collective authority.
The problem of constitutional design was ensuring that government powers would be effectively limited. The constitutions were designed and put in place by the classical liberals to check or constrain the power of the state over individuals.
The motivating force of the classical liberals was never one of making government work better or even of insuring that all interests were more fully represented. Built in conflict and institutional tensions were to act as constraints on the power and the size of government.
Representative democracy is a division of labour in the face of information overload. John Stuart Mill had sympathy for parliaments as best suited to be places of public debate on the various opinions held by the population and as a watchdog of the professionals who create and administer laws and policy:
Their part is to indicate wants, to be an organ for popular demands, and a place of adverse discussion for all opinions relating to public matters, both great and small; and, along with this, to check by criticism, and eventually by withdrawing their support, those high public officers who really conduct the public business, or who appoint those by whom it is conducted.
Representative democracy has the advantage of allowing the community to rely in its decision-making on the contributions of individuals with special qualifications of intelligence or character. Representative democracy makes a more effective use of resources within the citizenry to advance the common good.
Members of parliament are trustees who follow their own understanding of the best action to pursue in another view. As Edmund Burke wrote:
Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.
You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. … Our representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.
Modern democracy is government subject to electoral checks. Citizens do have sufficient knowledge and sophistication to vote out leaders who are performing poorly or contrary to their wishes. Modern democracy is the power to replace governments at periodic elections.
The power of the electorate to turn elected officials out of office at the next election gives elected officials an incentive to adopt policies that do not outrage public opinion and administer the policies with some minimum honesty and competence.
Richard Posner argued that a representative democracy enables the adult population, at very little cost in time, money or distraction from private pursuits commercial or otherwise:
to assure an orderly succession of at least minimally competent officials,
to generate feedback to the officials concerning the consequences of their policies,
to prevent officials from (or punish them for) entirely ignoring the interests of the governed, and
to prevent serious misalignments between government action and public opinion.
Enough of politics and elections, I have a life to lead. Don’t you? Too many want to remake democracy with the faculty workshop as their model.
Such deliberation has demanding requirements for popular participation in the democratic process, including a high level of knowledge and analytical sophistication and an absence, or at least severe curtailment, of self-interested motive. The same goes for citizen initiated binding referendums.
27 May 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: Amnesty International, BDS, Gaza Strip, Hamas, Left-wing hypocrisy
Can there be any other explanation for why the BDS activists are not protesting in the streets against these summary executions by Hamas other than mass kidnappings.
What else is stopping them from protest against these flagrant human rights violations and calling for boycotts, disinvestment and sanctions against the Gaza Strip? Kudos to Amnesty International for finally putting out this report.
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