I was just reading a post on forecasts for US economic growth at Econbrowser. In it the author says: “However, even back in December, the White House forecast was slightly more optimistic than the private sector consensus”. This ‘overconfidence’ in the economy seems to have been a common theme in US public sector forecasts over […]
The Standard links to an interesting LA times article on loss aversion. Now loss aversion in itself is a very interesting issue, something Rauparaha may like to write about ;). However, my focus is going to fall on the same result that The Standard was interested in namely that people would rather earn $50k when […]
I fear that someone may look at the December PPI data and get a misleading impression about where the dairy money is going, this fear seems mildly justified by the tone of this piece by NZPA. Looking at the December quarter figure by itself, we see a massive 15% increase in the price of manufactured […]
CPW sent me a link to the following blog post on Econlog. In the post Bryan Caplan mentions an economist from Princeton (Roland Benabou), who argues that externalities provide a bridge between an economists conception of the world, and non-economists concepts. Although this may be a tad over the top (as non-economists place more value […]
More research out of Massey has recommended increasing government regulation. In this case, researchers found that the display case for cigarettes makes them too tempting for those trying to quit and for rebellious teenagers. As it is election year, politicians are interested in this ‘issue’ and are thinking about tightening the regulation surrounding these cigarette […]
At Kiwiblog there is mention of Don Brash stating that we should think about allowing the Reserve Bank to increase and reduce the petrol tax. This is something that the Reserve Bank has actually suggested itself (at the same time they suggested a floating GST rate). As far as I can tell they want to […]