The Herald reports: Opposition leader Chris Hipkins is dismissive of Prime Minister Christopher Luxon saying the country needs a “mature” conversation around the potential sale of state-owned assets. “What would this government do when they’ve run out of things to sell?” Hipkins said, after Luxon spoke positively of a new Treasury report that calls for […]
The stupidity of Labour on assets
The stupidity of Labour on assets
13 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, politics - USA, privatisation Tags: Singapore
What can be learned from Singaporean health care institutions?
06 Mar 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, growth miracles, health economics, industrial organisation Tags: health insurance, Singapore
Besides the usual, that is. Max Thilo of the UK has a new and excellent study on this, here is one excerpt from the foreword by Lord Warner: Second, and critical, the Singaporeans are not fixated on delivering services from acute hospitals – the most expensive part of any healthcare system because of its fixed […]
What can be learned from Singaporean health care institutions?
Lee Kuan Yew: Singapore’s Controversial founder
23 Mar 2023 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth miracles Tags: Singapore
Why Was Singapore Kicked Out of Malaysia?
25 May 2020 Leave a comment
in development economics, discrimination, economic history, economics of crime, growth miracles, income redistribution, property rights, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: Malaysia, racial discrimination, Singapore
No mucking about
21 Mar 2020 Leave a comment
in health economics, law and economics Tags: economics of pandemics, Singapore
Lee Kwan Yew was first seen by @nytimes as a bit of a commie when he founded Singapore #OTD
06 Jun 2019 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth miracles, Public Choice Tags: Singapore
Singapore Spring
29 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, growth miracles, Public Choice Tags: Asian Tigers, Singapore
He who is first is now last: real GDP per capita of the East Asian Tigers since 1950
05 Nov 2015 1 Comment
in development economics, economic history, growth miracles Tags: East Asian Tigers, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan
Japan has gone first to be last having been just overtaken in the last year or two by South Korea on a per capita real GDP basis, PPP. The Lost Decade certainly has taken its toll on Japanese relative prosperity. Singapore overtook Japan in the 1970s – a testament to the Singapore miracle. Hong Kong too overtook Japan on a purchasing power basis in the mid-1990s followed not long after by Taiwan. Singapore is seriously rich.
Source: The Conference Board. 2015. The Conference Board Total Economy Database™, May 2015, http://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/
The Singapore Spring
12 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, growth miracles Tags: Singapore
Singapore at 50
10 Aug 2015 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, development economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, growth miracles, Public Choice Tags: Singapore
The Quantity and Quality of Japanese, Singaporean and Hong Kong Lives, 1965 to 1995
23 Jun 2015 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, Gary Becker, growth miracles Tags: Hong Kong The Great Escape, Japan, life expectancy is, Singapore, The Great Enrichment, The Great Fact
Figure 1: increase in real GDP and increase in real GDP plus life expectancy GDP increase equivalent, Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong, 1965 to 1995
GDP per capita is usually used to proxy for the quality of life of individuals living in different countries. Becker and his co-authors computed a "full" growth rate that incorporates the gains in health and life expectancy.
Figure 2 shows that Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore started from similar levels of real GDP per capita PPP in 1960.
Figure 2: GDP per capita in 2014 US$ (converted to 2014 price level with updated 2011 PPPs), Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, 1960 – 2000
Source: The Conference Board. 2015. The Conference Board Total Economy Database™, May 2015, http://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/
Why a country’s average height is a good way of measuring its development | The Guardian
31 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics Tags: economics of physiology, Hong Kong, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea
I spotted this 20 years ago when I first travelled in Asia and then lived Japan for two years. In Japan in 1995, each generation of Japanese was head and shoulders taller than the last. In the Philippines, I could look over the crowd – it was great to be tall.
No more, no longer. In the Philippines, young Filipinos are often almost as tall as me.
When I visited Hong Kong recently, both the young Chinese men and women were a bit taller than me at McDonald’s. I am average height for my generation of Australian men.
via Why a country’s average height is a good way of measuring its development | News | The Guardian.
Both Venezuelan and Singapore were ruled by socialist strongmen
30 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in development economics, growth disasters, growth miracles Tags: autocracy, capitalism and freedom, Singapore, Venezuela
Bad luck http://t.co/EaIoiqnjbR—
TakingHayekSeriously (@FriedrichHayek) March 28, 2015
Singapore’s Peoples Action Party was expelled from Socialist International in 1976. There is widespread government ownership of businesses in Singapore. So much so, that a new term was invented for it: Government Linked Corporations.
An essay on Lee Kuan Yew, the man who remade Asia on.wsj.com/1BR9YD4 http://t.co/hxG2p7ECpX—
David Crawshaw (@davewsj) March 28, 2015
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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