Cross posted from Substack. A few years ago Gulnara and I made a video on unemployment. Although this was a particularly unpopular video, it was actually one of our favourites – and we keep thinking about ways we want to expand the story of our friend JM. In this video we give examples of how […]
Cross posted from Substack. Previously we’ve talked about the cost of job loss in terms of revealed consumption responses – i.e. how do individuals cut their spending following job loss. This is a useful concept, and there is going to be more to say on this in the next year. But a more basic point […]
Yesterday the New Zealand Budget was released and described as “surprisingly frilly” for a no-frills Budget. As a result, is it inflationary? My answer is “no idea” – I just wanted to use the same title as the Australian Budget post. You yell inflation at me and I say “monetary policy offset through higher interest […]
A common refrain when talking about unemployment benefits is the Iron Triangle of Welfare. If we are only going to spend a fixed amount on welfare payments, then there is a trade-off between the size of the payment and the incentive to work – where the incentive to work is captured by how much of […]
Last night was the Australian 2023/24 Budget. Like all Budgets it existed and was filled with politics – but I was surprised to find my twitter filled this morning with people calling it highly inflationary, and others saying it would reduce inflation. The arguments appear to be: I’m a bit slow, so I wanted to […]
In the last blog post I noted that there were rumors of a higher benefit rate for those over 55. Since then we’ve been thrown into an information vacuum in Australia, as noted here by David Plunket. After some detailed discussion in the e61 offices my boss (Gianni La Cava) snuck off and pulled together […]