The Asian Wage Premium
07 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
Imagining the 2015 UK general election under AV
30 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
What would the last UK election have been like be under the alternative vote (AV)? I was discussing this question with Henry Schlechta, and I thank him for bringing it up.
The 2011 attempt at electoral reform failed, but let’s imagine it had somehow succeeded, say, for example, if the referendum had turned the other way, or if the Liberal Democrats had succeeded in getting it passed without a referendum.
In the referendum, one of the challenges the Liberal Democrats faced was that they were seen as by far the main beneficiaries of the proposed change. Conservatives and Labour alike would have been expected to rank the Lib-Dems second, and in all projections of previous elections under AV, the Lib-Dems were estimated to gain about two-dozen seats on average, even becoming the official opposition had AV been in place in 1997.
However, according to the Electoral Reform Society’s report
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History of US debt limits..
30 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
An insightful interview of Prof Thomas Sargent. He recently discussed his new paper on US debt limits at one of the IMF lectures.
In the interview, he further distils the lessons:
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Decline of West Indian cricket: A case of too much government intervention?
28 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
The West Indian cricket in many ways is like Japanese economy. Both peaked in mid-1980s and have just struggled ever since. Just that Japan has somehow maintained its stagnation levels but West Incies cricket keep finding new ways to decline further. One is waiting for a recovery which has become a perennial issue.
Tony Cosier has a piece on decline of WI cricket. He says that it was the govt which led to decline of the WI cricket and is also not allowing to recover (how often we hear and see that in economics too):
It is known that each of the three committees to review the board’s governance over the past eight years advised urgent change. The reports of the committees headed by former Jamaica prime minister PJ Patterson and St Kitts and Nevis Queen’s Counsel Charles Wilkin called for the reduction in the number of directors and the introduction…
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Soldiers exchange cigarettes during Christmas Truce, 1914
25 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
WWI British and German soldiers exchange cigarettes, gifts, and addresses during Christmas Truce, 1914. http://t.co/8HFq1870YI—
ClassicPics (@History_Pics) April 25, 2015
When Keynes rejected Friedman’s paper
22 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
Again going back to the PBS source, pointed earlier on this blog.
Ok now here is a must read interview of Milton Friedman. It talks about Friedman’s views of markets, quantity theory of money, Friedman’s rejection of Keynes theory of great depression, though he had great respect for Keynes the economist, on Nixon, on Ronald Reagan, his role in Pinochet’s Chile etc etc.
First the topic of the post:
INTERVIEWER: On a personal level, what contact did you have with him?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: With Keynes? The only contact I had with him was to submit an article to theEconomic Journal, which he was editor of, which he refused and rejected. I had no personal contact with him other than that.
INTERVIEWER: What did the rejection say?
MILTON FRIEDMAN: Well, it was an article that was critical of something that A.C. Pigou, a professor in London and at Cambridge, had written. And Keynes…
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Three Mistakes Free Marketers Often Make
22 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
Sandy Ikeda Professor of economics at SUNY writes on the three mistakes.
- Mistake #1: “The free market doesn’t need regulation.”
- Mistake #2: “Markets will regulate themselves.”
- Mistake #3: “Buyers and sellers compete with each other.”
These are really old philosophical issues around economics. Well, we need regulation but most of the time regulation too gets it wrong. There aren’t any easy answers to all this..
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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