New Zealand’s football (soccer if you are from the US) team is playing in their final World Cup qualifier tonight. If they beat Bahrain they reach the World Cup finals for the first time since 1982.
Most of the members of TVHE will be going to the game tonight, and all of them will be watching in some form. So we are thinking that everyone else should really cheer the All Whites on as well 
Go the All Whites!
A short post by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution lays down what I think is the most important element of economics blogging.
People who learn economics through the blogosphere also receive feedback, especially if they sample dialogue across a number of blogs of differing perspectives. The feedback comes from which arguments other people found convincing. Do the points you wanted to hold firm on, or cede, correspond to the evolution of the dialogue? This feedback is not as accurate as Rybka but it’s an ongoing test of your fluid intelligence and your ability to revise your opinion.Not many outsiders understand what a powerful learning mechanism the blogosphere has set in place.
For both the author, readers, and people that comment that blogging experience adds value, not just from the initial post, but from the conversation that takes place following the post.
I know my reasons for blogging are purely selfish. I want people to tell me why I’m wrong about things, and how I can improve my understanding of issues. Furthermore, I like the idea of having a historical record of my opinions – so if similar events happen in the future I can quickly jog my own memory.
Following today’s discussion on an addiction study I have realised that I must have an addition.
For the last 2 months I have been painfully addicted to a horrendous substance – not drinking (except for this one intervention that was staged about 3 weeks ago).
It has had all the negative impacts associated with addiction:
- It has visibly negatively impacted on my health – I have had the flu a few times after all,
- The longer I haven’t drunk the harder it has been to go out and drink (a sure sign of addiction, and in conjunction with funky discounting this could lead to time inconsistency),
- It has caused externalities (namely my complaining to other people).
All I know is that I’m personally concerned about this addiction, and I’ll be doing what I can to solve it tonight. Even so, can the government really trust an irrational agent like me to drink enough?
Given this I think I need some government intervention. How about the government subsidises my alcohol and the Law Commission pushes for the regulation of alcohol towards me.
Note: The only parties I’m making fun of in this post are the government, the Law Commission, and myself (for not drinking for 9 weeks) – not any of the economic analysts.
And don’t try to convince me not drinking isn’t an addiction – I seriously have been struggling to break it!
As you will have noted all four of the current authours (Matt, Rauparaha, Agnitio, and Goonix) have been running at close to full capacity outside of the blog, and so blog material has been lacking for the last three months. Furthermore, we have barely been able to respond to comments.
To help push along blog output we have expanded the effective labour force by introducing “the Hand”. It will cover issues that the rest of us either don’t really care about or don’t feel that we know enough about. However, the authour of the Hand will not remain constant. Effectively, it is a guest blogger.
The Hand differs from previous guest bloggers in that it allows people to post with us without having to think up their own pseudonym. This should reduce the cost associated with producing a piece for us, increasing output at the margin.
The first “the Hand” post will take place at 8am tomorrow on the BERL alcohol report – the one issue I can think of that I’m both sick of hearing about and haven’t read anything about 
I know no-one here will really care, but I’m actually pretty excited that we (the Phoenix) signed Paul Ifill (ht Yellow Fever). He is a player I’ve rated for this level for a couple of years now and had no idea that we were tracking him.
Definitely looking forward to the start of the season. BTW, buy a season ticket already.
Well folks, a new world record transfer deal has just occurred. Real Madrid under a new President, looking to reignite the spirit of the Galacticos, has shelled out over NZ$200 million for Cristiano Ronaldo, world player of the year in 2008. The previous world record transfer fee was incidentally set this week, with Kaka moving to the same side from Inter Milan for NZ$150 million. The record before that also rested with Real, snatching arguably the greatest player the world has ever seen Zinedine Zidane from Juventus for slightly less than NZ$150 million.
What recession?!
Curious Cat has an economics carnival on at the moment. It is a good idea – it is interesting that economics doesn’t seem to have as many carnivals while other disciplines do.
Go check out the posts from all around the economics blogsphere.
Does anyone know what Nepal is like to visit? Does anyone have any suggestions about places to visit in Nepal.
Any comments (relevant) welcome.
Apparently Red Hat, a vendor of a commercial linux distribution, has been doing well during the recession. This makes sense intuitively, people are looking for ways to cut costs due to the economic climate, and giving Microsoft less money seams to be a good way to go about it.
This reminds me of a classic interview question people get asked by investment banks, “Can you think of an asset with a negative beta?”
So next time someone gets asked that question they can say something besides “funeral homes” (stocks brokers jump out windows during recessions etc.. the most common answer or so I’m told!) . They can say that open source software vendors might also:)
It is St Patrick’s day. Although I’m not Irish, my father was extremely Irish – so this has to be a holiday on par with anything othere … hence why I’m at work 
I would like to think that the day is about my brother, Patrick (who makes tax calculators), but I think it’s about this guy. He is celebrated for driving the Pagans out of Ireland – well that doesn’t seem particularly nice. Hopefully he did so in a way that was a potential pareto improvement, and involved adequate compensation.
Anyway, have a good St Patrick’s day.
Note: Homepaddock and the Inquiring Mind are both celebrating as well.
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