Cross-post from Substack. Look I’m from New Zealand – so when everyone around me started talking about ATARs I just smiled and nodded. In fact I probably couldn’t talk to most people in New Zealand about education. I’m from the “pre-NCEA” era – where a single end of year exam for five courses, scaled to […]
Cross-post from Substack. COVID was a pretty big life shock for all of us – with uncertainty about the virus, and the magnitude of government interventions associated with it, leading people to change their way of doing things across a number of dimensions of their life. One of the clearest changes was the decision of […]
Cross post from Substack I keep receiving emails that Star Wars Squadron is only $2.50. Wild! I love Star Wars, and when I was a kid I loved flying around all the planes and stuff. But why such a big special? And why are lots of computer games on a big sale now? I mean […]
Cross posted on Substack. At the close of 2022, Gulnara and I thought it would be fun to pop up some forecasts for 2023. So what were they and how did we do? The forecasts It appears we made four forecasts: Right, nice consistent story – two changes in the underlying economy, two policy responses. […]
Cross post from Substack. It’s Boxing Day – and I’ve already used up the idea of discussing the now largely missing Boxing Day sales. And the idea that Boxing Day is increasingly lame is common across years. So instead the focus of today will be on a different industrial economics topic – the state of […]
Cross-posted from substack. I’ve been seeing a lot of the following around the place: Looks pretty scary right – red columns go lower than during the Global Financial Crisis :O However, these big red columns are a bit misleading. The data is true – financial institutions holding government bonds have made large unrealised losses on […]