Matt Nolan

Brief notes on communicating economic ideas

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Hey all.  I am doing a short presentation on communicating economic ideas – a bit of an abstract conversation where I talk about it in terms of assumptions.  This is similar to last year’s NZAE paper, but focused on only a subset of what was covered.

The presentation can be found here.

It is aimed at people who do economic modelling and have a core framework that they use with other economists.  It is about conceptualising the ways we adjust our arguments/models to communicate them to a broader public, and in turn focuses on the types of assumptions we put in place – and the ways economists need to be careful with how these are communicated, so to avoid accidentally misleading or overselling.

Matt Nolan

Discussion Tuesday

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Recently, I’ve been attempting to do aerial yoga.  This has led my friends to call me a hippy for some reason, what can I say economists are strange.  Anyway, this led to the following discussion statement from my friend – which he suggested I post (and I agree it would be fun to discuss).

Why would your null hypothesis be that being a hippie makes you less likely to be a dick than being a yuppie? If anything, hippies refusal to compete socially on the dimension of income just means that competition on all other dimensions is likely to be more fierce.

 

Matt Nolan

On free-riders and externalities

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Today I wrote a brief post on the Green announcement of a carbon tax.  I do support the carbon tax, but just wanted to raise some specific issues to think about.

However, a number of people on twitter were unhappy with me saying that, without Kyoto, we didn’t have an externality here – and I think their point is worth discussing.  I think a key issue here is the “group” involved and how we think of policy.  Hopefully by having a brief discussion here I can help to clarify what I was talking about in the prior post.

If this brief rundown isn’t sufficient, I don’t have anything more to say unless you add a comment here with a new framework – I’ve been as clear about my framework as I can be and really need to get back to work 😉

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Matt Nolan

Greens carbon tax

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I see that the Greens have announced a carbon tax to replace the emissions trading scheme (with details and analysis by BERL here).  The authors of TVHE have long been a fan of  this type of switch when discussing the issue (eg here and here).  And the idea of pricing an externality and using it to lower other tax burdens is a good one.  Note:  John Small also discusses here, with specific discussion about dairy.  Aaron Schiff discusses here.

So it should be unsurprising that I broadly agree with the aim Green party policy here, and this should be kept in mind while reading my post.

However, TVHE isn’t about saying what policies I think are good or bad – it is about considering trade-offs and thinking about the details of policy when we can.  In that context, there are a few points I must raise.

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Matt Nolan

Tweetpic of the day

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James sent me the following, I have nothing to add:

I’d also point out that Piketty has discussed claims of data mistakes here:

The key predictions did not rely on these perceived data errors in the first place – it is the framework for thinking about inequality that was of use, and which helped to create debate.  A debate that seems to have moved past his explanations, and looks like it will lead to a lot more research – which is choicetastic!

Matt Nolan

The rhetoric of restricting the choice of the poor

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Via Gareth Morgan on twitter I spotted the following post from the University of Otago Public Health blog.

The money quote:

They found that the biggest impact of a minimum price policy was on “harmful” drinkers in the lowest income quintile (7.6% reduction in alcohol), whereas the impact on harmful drinkers in the highest income quintile was modest (1%). Consumption fell by 1.6% among “responsible” drinkers in the lowest income quintile. That is, the impact is concentrated among low-income harmful drinkers.

Moreover, this Lancet paper found that “Individuals in the lowest socioeconomic group (living in routine or manual worker households and comprising 41·7% of the sample population) would accrue 81·8% of reductions in premature deaths and 87·1% of gains in terms of quality-adjusted life-years.” In the public health field, we seldom see policy packages that have such a notable impact on reducing health inequalities. [** Further comment at end].

The gains come from putting a minimum price of alcohol that prices the poor out from consumption.  Consumption that has a benefit – something that is ignored constantly.

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