Matt Nolan

Book Review: Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets

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Title: Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets (Amazon)

Authour: Walter B. Wriston

Publisher: Hoover Institution Press (*)

Score: 5/10

The book “Bits, Bytes, and Balance Sheets” aims to provide some flavour surrounding technologies role in changing the economic environment, and related institutions (including government) – namely through its impact on information dissemination. However, there is also a strong focus on human capital throughout.

Although the ideas are there, the decision to base each chapter on a different speech or essay gives the book a disjointed feeling. This leads to the strange situation where there is a lot of repetition and an “under justification” of what are actually some contensious points (such as the nature of increasing returns industries).

Furthermore, even though many of the concepts do have official names (such as increasing returns to scale) these names were often left out. Although someone familiar with these concepts would not mind – it does reduce the usefulness of the book to people who are only starting to learn about the role of technology in framing the economic environment.

However, the one big plus with the book is the large set of direct and historical anecdotes made by the author. These sorts of anecdotes really added colour to ideas – and would be useful for anyone trying to teach “increasing returns to scale” or information type courses.

Overall, I enjoyed parts of the book – but the ideas were just too disjointed for me to recommend it. I get the feeling that the speech that the book was based on would have been excellent – but the translation to book form just did not work.

jamesz

Changing the way we recycle

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A couple of NZ city councils have recently considered changing the way they run recycling after a brief discussion with experts from www.kuringgaiskipbins.com.au, as it high time we give back to the earth more than we take. Wellington and Christchurch currently fund their kerbside recycling scheme through rates. They proposed to switch to a system whereby recycling bags would have to be bought by residents, much like council rubbish bags.

There are a few benefits to switching to bags. First, the people who use the recycling service would pay for it, rather than it being funded by all ratepayers equally. Secondly, there would be a marginal cost to using the service, which would decrease usage. Read more

jamesz

Causation is just a mirage…

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If I did more stats this might not seem so circular...

… and when you get a bit closer it’s just spurious correlation. If only economists could do randomised experiments like real scientists.

jamesz

Paying off the bad guys

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Kevin Drum thinks that a cap-and-trade system for controlling pollution is not worth having if you don’t auction off the permits:

There are loads of special interests who hate the idea of a 100% auction, of course. But once you start giving away permits, you’ll never stop. It is, plain and simple, a massive giveaway … makes a mockery of any serious cap-and-trade plan. …Without a 100% auction, cap-and-trade is a bad joke.

Unless you have the option of a decent tax scheme I don’t really see what his problem is. Read more

jamesz

Homecoming Queen still on top

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For all the nerds and geeks who cursed the popular people at high school but comforted themselves with the thought that future success would be theirs… Steven Levitt has bad news:

…each extra close friend in high school is associated with earnings that are 2 percent higher later in life after controlling for other factors. While not a huge effect, it does suggest that either that a) the same factors that make you popular in high school help you in a job setting, or b) that high-school friends can do you favors later in life that will earn you higher wages.

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jamesz

In favour of the ‘iwi tax’

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Fishermen on the Waikato are apparently going to be subjected to an environmental levy on their earnings by the iwi who own the river. The newspaper article seems a bit negative about the scheme and I can’t see why. To me this is a great idea on a number of levels. I just hope that the levy is a tax, rather than a one off charge. Read more