Matt Nolan

Is Westpac admitting collusion

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Apologises for my long delay from the blog – I am afraid that it will continue for the next couple of weeks. I am on an economics adventure, trying to fight the beast of recession with sketchy logic and econometrics 😉

However, I had to say something about this recent Westpac article on bank funding (ht Rates Blog).

At the end Westpac says that it, and other banks, have been pricing at average cost instead of marginal cost – so they have been pricing based on the cost of credit to them, not the cost of sourcing additional credit to make loans.

Now, according to Westpac the average cost is higher than the marginal cost, and all banks have seemingly agreed to do this even though since the marginal cost of credit is below the current “price” an individual bank could “defect” and make some money. Is it me, or has Westpac blatantly admitted to collusion here?

Westpac has said that it, and other banks, have implicitly agreed to set interest rates at a higher level than marginal cost – which I presume must be closer to the collusive price than marginal cost as otherwise it wouldn’t stick.

Now I didn’t think the banks were colluding, but if Westpac is willing to go ahead and admit it then …

[Note: to be fair I think long run marginal cost, which banks would actually need to set fixed rate loans based on, will be higher than marginal cost – and this would explain much of the difference. However, this isn’t what Westpac said.  Also, I’ve ignored market power and the prevalence of fixed costs – again if they wanted to make these arguments go ahead, but do they really want to say that they used market power to keep prices above the marginal cost of credit 🙂 ]

goonix

It’s that time of the year again…

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Public servants are always frantic at this time of the year. I hear you collectively asking why? It’s nearing 30 June, the end of the government’s financial year. As such the various departments/ministries/commissions are very *busy*, throwing money around like they were the leader of the free world.

The perverse incentives on government officials to make sure they spend all of their allocated budget in the financial year, while nothing new, always amuses me. They are strongly incentivised to make sure that the kitty is empty come June 30, otherwise they risk having money taken away from them in the following year. You have to ask about the importance of the projects that are only taking place in order to empty the coffers.

As a result of these incentives it’s a very lucrative time to be consulting, even if the gravy train is about as efficient as KiwiRail.

jamesz

Optimal health spending

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Greg Mankiw isn’t impressed by Obama’s comments on health spending. Obama thinks that increasing health spending without limit is a bad thing. Mankiw points to a QJE article that suggests increasing health spending is optimal:

As people get richer and consumption rises, the marginal utility of consumption falls rapidly. Spending on health to extend life allows individuals to purchase additional periods of utility. The marginal utility of life extension does not decline. As a result, the optimal composition of total spending shifts toward health, and the health share grows along with income. In projections based on the quantitative analysis of our model, the optimal health share of spending seems likely to exceed 30 percent by the middle of the century.

What I find interesting is the choice of assumptions in this article. Read more

jamesz

A dollar a year?!

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Dilbert is on the money again. This time on the subject of CEOs working without pay as a show of penance.

jamesz

Aid vs development

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Lant Pritchett comes out strongly in favour of aid agencies that promote economic development on Aid Watch:

There are many ways of providing assistance to people in poor countries that do little or nothing to produce development. While we might all whole-heartedly agree that de-worming is demonstrated to be cost-effective assistance, its impact on development is, at best, tiny.
…
[A]ddressing a series of important problems for well-being like vaccinations, schools for girls, HIV/AIDS prevention or malaria does not add up to a development agenda.
…
Development, as accelerated modernization… is the only demonstrated and sustained way to achieve the objectives of increased well-being.

This is particularly relevant in NZ now that Murray McCully wants to make NZAID promote development, rather than poverty elimination. Are his opponents just concerned about political manipulation of aid money, or do they really think that development is the wrong goal for an aid agency? Read more

jamesz

Tourism funding

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Deciding how to fund tourism is tricky: On the one hand there are a fairly well-defined group of firms who gain most of the benefits. On the other hand, a large, ill-defined group of firms benefit somewhat from tourism and promotion of New Zealand as a destination is common property. Once you’ve spent money on a promotional campaign and people decide to come to NZ, you can’t restrict access to those tourists to the firms that paid for the campaign. However, tourists’ spending is rival since each dollar can only be spent at one place. The problem with common resources is that nobody has the incentive to provide them.

Ordinarily you might ask the government to sort out the problem, but then the government is basically subsidising an advertising campaign for the tourism industry. One answer is for a tourism industry body to fund advertising campaigns for its members jointly. The problem here is that nobody has an incentive to join such a body, since they get the benefits of promoting NZ as a destination whether they’re in it or not. Furthermore, the industry rightly points out that its advertising is subsidising revenue for all businesses who have some custom from tourists.

John Key’s solution is to match industry advertising spending dollar-for-dollar. Read more