Reply: Climate change: the heresy of pragmatism

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Idiot/Savant disputed our claim that market mechanisms are the best way to fight climate change on pragmatic grounds – namely stating that a regulatory solution that works would be better than a “market-based” solution that does nothing. Now I don’t disagree with this – however, I do think that I/S heavily mis-represented both our claim, and our initial criticism of what he said.

As comments are disabled on I/S’s blog No Right Turn, I have to reply by way of a blog post :)

In this post, I/S makes a number of claims I would like to dispute:

  1. We accuse I/S of anti-market bias for considering regulation,
  2. We state that a market mechanism is always superior to regulation,
  3. The argument is whether regulation is better than nothing – not better than the ETS,

Now it is best to answer these claims backwards – lets start with 3:

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Gift or investment: Lil Wayne edition

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Over at the excellent intersection between anthropology and economics blog, there is a discussion about the Lil Wayne, his latest album, and how this fits into the idea of a gift economy.

[Disclaimer: I haven't listened to Lil Wayne, so my knowledge on the marginal benefit of his music is severely limited.]

Here the question is asked:

Specifically: who’s going to buy this album when they have been so generously gifted with Carter’s work for free?

But it has been popular – very popular. This raises the next query:

It may be that Lil Wayne has succeeded here because he is, in the opinion of Rolling Stone, the “best rapper alive.” If you are this good, ubiquity and generosity have no penalty. Free for all or fee for all, it doesn’t matter. We have to listen. But intuitively this seems wrong. Surely the incentive for “giveaways” should be more pressing for lesser talents.

This is what I would like to discuss more, in context of a “gift economy”.

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July Mortgage rates: A question for our readers

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Hi all,

Does anyone know why ASB cut mortgage rates following the OCR decision? Bank credit funding costs have been going through the roof – which is why the RBNZ felt that it needed to cut the OCR just to prevent large increases in mortgage rates!

I’ve heard that Kiwibank can cut rates because of the large amount of domestic funding it has under its thumb. I was wondering if there is there something specific to ASB that has allowed them to cut rates? If anyone has any idea I would love to hear from them in the comments.

Update: Westpac as well – still only the two year rate though, so it could still be viewed as “cheap” advertising.

Update 2: According to Good Returns this was the interest rate action:

Following the Reserve Bank cutting the official cash rate by 25 basis points last Thursday, ASB, TSB, Bank Direct, Sovereign and Westpac all reduced their two-year rates.
ANZ and National Bank broke ranks with their competitors and announced they would cut one year fixed rates as well as two year rates. Their two year rates came down 25 basis points to 8.95% and their one-year rates are down 20 points to 9.20%.

Hmmmm.

Price indicies: A discussion

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Note: Other posts in this discussion are available under the tag “inflation debate“.

With the trade-off between inflation and other things behind us, and a justification for inflation targeting, we have a good base to discuss current activity and issues. The aim is to now discuss other methods of fighting inflation – however, before discussing this I think it is important to discuss another technical issue: How do we measure inflation?

This is both an incredibly important issue, and a highly contentious one. While I was going to write a long post on this, Dr Chinn at Econobrowser beat me to it (and also did an infinitely better job than I could have ;) ). Dr Chinn discusses how we use the CPI to measure inflation, and the limitations of this measure (especially in terms of individuals expectations of what inflation is!). As a result, he covered all my main points :)

However, I will write some additional stuff anyway ;)

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July 2008 official cash rate cut: The long and winding road

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So the Reserve Bank has cut interest rates.

If you normally read this blog you will know that this disappoints me – and I am grateful that both of you understand the pain I’m going through ;)

There has been a lot of commentary on the Reserve Bank’s decision, which I will link to before moving into my own discussion (TUMEKE!) (The Inquirying Mind *) (The Hive) (Not PC) (The Standard) (Kiwiblog *) (No Minister *) (Colin Espiner) (Show me the money) (Jafapete). I am happy to see so many New Zealand blogs willing to discuss the issue – even though my views may be quite different :)

Now let me tell you what I’m thinking:

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July 08 OCR decision: Rates cut to 8.0%

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So the Reserve Bank cut interest rates to 8.0%.

The only new information that has come out since June is a higher inflation outcome as a result of larger than expected increases in petrol and food prices. Furthermore recent increases in funding costs have helped to convince the Bank to cut.

Even ignoring inflation, it appears that the Reserve Bank values the livelihood of those who have mortgages above people who are struggling to pay their food and fuel bills (which will go up, as a lower exchange rate will increase the New Zealand price of both).

Good Bloomberg piece here.

More discussion to come later (the additional discussion has now appeared).