Thirteen years' ago yesterday: but who will stop the cell phone king? pic.twitter.com/eNbtwJchji
— Ryan Bourne (@MrRBourne) November 13, 2020
#OTD another forgotten natural monopoly
12 Nov 2021 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation, survivor principle Tags: creative destruction, natural monopoly, network economics
Regulating Monopolies: A History of Electricity Regulation – Learn Liberty
30 Aug 2021 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, economic history, economics of regulation, law and economics Tags: competition law, network economics
The Hidden Rules of Conversation
09 May 2020 1 Comment
in economics of education, economics of media and culture Tags: economics of languages, network economics
Richard Epstein, “A History of Public Utility Regulation in the Supreme Court”
09 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, economics of regulation, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, financial economics, income redistribution, industrial organisation, law and economics, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking, Richard Epstein, survivor principle Tags: competition law, network economics, price controls
Why did wholesale power prices in California go negative last year
11 Apr 2017 Leave a comment
in energy economics Tags: network economics, power prices, solar energy
$5.2 billion in rail spending since 2003 budget @JulieAnneGenter @JordNZ
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.
Map of cables laid internationally
10 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economic history, industrial organisation Tags: maps, network economics
The Internet underwater.
Map of cables laid internationally.(by The Guardian) http://t.co/FrBpHsTs7t—
Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) September 19, 2015
How to tell someone’s age by knowing her name
06 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture Tags: brand names, economics of languages, economics of names, network economics
The median Emily is just 17 years old. The median Dorothy is 74. 53eig.ht/1HAbW2j http://t.co/b4oUzm4pfy—
(@FiveThirtyEight) September 24, 2015
Each language’s equivalent of "it’s all Greek to me"
13 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture Tags: economics of languages, network economics, network goods
Each language's equivalent of "it's all Greek to me".
(Source: bit.ly/1KM8dML ) http://t.co/WmLBWkIqzZ—
Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) June 11, 2015
How many speak each language?
07 Jul 2015 Leave a comment
in population economics Tags: economics of languages, network economics, network goods
Gorgeous representation of the world's languages.
scmp.com/infographics/a… http://t.co/HytMI4nXzQ—
Zach Noble (@thezachnoble) May 30, 2015
How infectious is measles?
02 May 2015 Leave a comment
in health economics Tags: anti-vaccination movement, measles, network economics, vaccines
A Measles patient infects 12-18 other people.
An Ebola patient infects 1-2.5 other people. http://t.co/iQS0c6vxYz—
Amitabh Chandra (@amitabhchandra2) April 24, 2015
The economic and educational psychology case against making Te reo Māori compulsory in NZ schools
23 Apr 2015 1 Comment
in discrimination, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, politics - USA, poverty and inequality Tags: do gooders, economics of languages, Maori economic development, network economics, Te reo Māori
The Race Relations Commissioner Dame Susan Davoy has called for Te Reo Māori to be compulsory in New Zealand schools. She said being bilingual would be “a real added advantage” to young Kiwis and more people knowing Te reo Māori would help race relations.
Learning another language is not a priority for the Pākehā children or Māori mokupuna when you consider the poor literacy rates among Māori, Pasifika and Pākehā. The priority for children in an English speaking country is to master English. Too many children leave school with inadequate reading and writing skills.
Figure 1: Prose literacy by ethnicity, 2011
Source: Literacy skills of young adult New Zealanders | Education Counts.
Lower levels of literacy and numerously are much higher among Māori and Pasifika children. Pākehā consistently having a larger proportion in the higher levels of prose literacy.
Figure 2: Prose literacy rates by ethnicity, 1996 and 2006
Source: Indicator 9: Literacy rates — Office of the Auditor-General New Zealand.
60%of Pākehā are above the minimum level of competence to meet the prose literacy requirements of a knowledge society. This contrasts with the majority of Māori and Pasifika who are below the minimum level of competence.
Furthermore, requiring children who do not have an aptitude for language or school in general to learn a language will reinforce in those who are not doing well that they are not very smart. This will give them more reasons to hate school and leave as soon as possible and never go back.
The key to helping children who do not have an aptitude to succeed greatly at school is to find the subjects where they do do well so they can get a good start to life. If students are not good at academic subjects, requiring them to do more academic studies such as study language is fool-hardy.
Taking resources, and more importantly, students learning time away from basic literacy skills will do little for a Māori economic development and race relations. This is because this taking resources and student learning time away from literacy and basic education will slow the closing of income gaps between Māori and others.
Language is a network good. It pays to join the largest network so you can communicate and do business with more people. The wage premium for immigrants learning English in English-speaking’s countries is about 15%.
Learning Te reo Māori will not help children in their other subjects. The psychology of the transfer of learning was founded 100 years ago to explore the hypothesis that learning Latin gave the student muscle to learn other subjects, both other languages and generally learn faster.
Educational psychologists found that Latin does not help much in studying other languages and other subjects. No significant differences were found in deductive and inductive reasoning or text comprehension among students with 4 years of Latin, 2 years of Latin or no Latin at all.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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