The Mesopotamian Front Awakens – Joseph Joffre Gets Sacked I THE GREAT W…
28 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: World War I
28 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, laws of war, liberalism, sports economics, war and peace

28 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation, survivor principle, television Tags: creative destruction
Treasury says one thing in a speech but quite another in the BEFU
28 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, fiscal policy, inflation targeting, labour economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand, unemployment Tags: monetary policy

I picked up The Post this morning to find the lead story headlined “Recession hits homes harder than businesses”, reporting a speech given earlier this week by Treasury’s deputy secretary and chief economic adviser Dominick Stephens. There was an account of the same speech, but with some different material, on BusinessDesk a couple of days […]
Treasury says one thing in a speech but quite another in the BEFU
Week 309 – Allies Issue Potsdam Declaration – WW2 – July 27, 1945
28 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: World War II
Three Years of World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR Week 157
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: World War I
I Started Blogging 20 Years Ago Today
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment

In the summer of 2004, Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok invited me to guest blog for their new Marginal Revolution. MR was less than a year old then. And while I started sidelining for listservs back in 1993, insiders told me that blogging was something new. So exactly 20 years ago I gave it a…
I Started Blogging 20 Years Ago Today
Tikanga, law and information asymmetry
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economic history, law and economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights Tags: constitutional law
Justice Joe Williams in his 2013 paper Lex Aoteoroa made a case for Māori tikanga being recognized as New Zealand’s “first law”. Tikanga existed prior to New Zealand’s development of a legal system based on the British model. Without written language pre-European Māori tikanga is not well documented. However, its customs and norms governed, for […]
Tikanga, law and information asymmetry
Utah’s The Independent is Right, Climate Activism Ignores or Harms the World’s Poor
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in development economics, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, growth disasters, growth miracles Tags: climate alarmism
Sierer’s analysis hits the nail on the head that climate activism is more likely to be harming the world’s poor rather than helping them.
Utah’s The Independent is Right, Climate Activism Ignores or Harms the World’s Poor
Fast Takes on *Build, Baby, Build*: Ed Glaeser
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, income redistribution, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice, regulation, rentseeking, urban economics Tags: housing affordability, land supply

Ed Glaeser is the chairman of Harvard’s Department of Economics. He’s also widely credited with reviving the entire field of Urban Economics. His 2018 “The Economics of Housing Supply” (with Joe Gyourko) in the Journal of Economic Perspectives was a major inspiration for my Build, Baby, Build. So in the latest “Fast Takes” interview, I…
Fast Takes on *Build, Baby, Build*: Ed Glaeser
Not a good case for a CBDC
27 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, financial economics, law and economics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - New Zealand, property rights Tags: digital currency

The Reserve Bank’s latest round of consultation on a possible central bank digital currency (CBDC) closes today. The thick and probably expensive (at least one of the documents was produced jointly with the consultancy firm Accenture) set of consultation documents came up a few months ago. I thought I had run out of time to […]
Not a good case for a CBDC
Which are the most effective subsidies for green energy?
26 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: cap and trade, carbon tax, climate alarmism
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: A recent study finds that, of all domestic subsidies, the most effective involve replacing the dirty production of electricity with the cleaner production of electricity. In practice, that means subsidies or tax credits for solar and wind power. Those are more than twice as effective as […]
Which are the most effective subsidies for green energy?
The Cancer Society is racist? Really?
26 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in discrimination, health economics, law and economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: political correctness, racial discrimination, regressive left
Graham Adams writes on the media’s mission to demonise NZ’s health system — Not long after I began treatment in 2015 for an aggressive leukaemia, I was phoned by a representative of the Cancer Society. A hospital oncology staffer had strongly recommended I give the organisation my name and contact details so I did. I […]
The Cancer Society is racist? Really?

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