Aug
31
2011
Over at his blog Roger Kerr shows a graph of net external liabilities for a range of different countries – showing that in March 2009 New Zealand was pretty far out there. It is true that our net international liability position is pretty big, it is also true that even though it might be exagerrated …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/08/31/a-note-on-our-debt-level/
Aug
30
2011
I think the statement “points to keep” in mind is currently my favourite thing around … however, I digress and I haven’t actually started the post yet. Over at the Dim Post Danyl has an interesting point, derived from this post: If some future entrepreneur invents a labour saving device that makes them a multi-trillionaire …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/08/30/robots-uber-richness-unemployment-points-to-keep-in-mind/
Aug
29
2011
Matt blogs every now and then defending economic forecasters and always seems to draw out at least a couple of comments slagging off forecasters for being inaccurate. His reponse is that it’s not the numbers that matter but the qualitative analysis of risks and market direction. His defence came to mind when I was reading …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/08/29/whats-the-point-of-forecasts/
Aug
29
2011
Question: Why is it that, in economics (compared to other disciplines), people are a lot less likely to let observed facts change their opinion on what is going on, or how the world works? Is it because: The data is too unreliable The data requires “value statements” to make sense that cannot be separated from …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/08/29/bleg-facts-and-beliefs/
Aug
26
2011
Wow. I realised David Suzuki was a little bit loose when he talked about economics – but he’s a smart man. I assumed that when he talked he was merely bemoaning the fact that environment issues get ignored in policy, not that he actually had no idea how economics or the allocation of resources worked. …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/08/26/economics-and-the-environment-theory-and-reality/
Aug
26
2011
I see that, once again, we have people attacking forecasters because what happened was very different to the numbers that they pulled out of their computer (here and here). Now if your belief is that this is the role of a forecaster, then this criticism is fair enough – after all, there is so much …
Permanent link to this article: http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2011/08/26/forecasts-are-wrong-but-is-there-some-reason-for-them/
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