I have posted many times on the value of smoking bans. These stop passive smoking externalities but also increase the user costs of smoking which encourages quitting. They also improve financial returns in businesses subject to the bans. Read more »
I have posted many times on the value of smoking bans. These stop passive smoking externalities but also increase the user costs of smoking which encourages quitting. They also improve financial returns in businesses subject to the bans. Read more »
Albert Hofman, the discoverer of LSD and long term psychedelic adventurer died on April 29 aged 102. Read more »
This most recent report by the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs provides a careful evaluation of cannabis. It recommends retaining the classification of cannabis as a Class C drug (along with valium, GHB and steroids) rather than upgrading it into Class B of more dangerous drugs such as amphetamines and barbiturates. Nevertheless it does describe cannabis use as a significant public health issue. Read more »
I am surprised at the cost of non-specialised undergraduate textbooks these days. First because, as a parent of a university student, I get presented with what seem to be huge bills each semester and second because I as a first-year instructor I set hundreds of students each year texts that seem to always cost more than $100 per volume. Read more »
I got this insight into traditional Labor insensitivity to refugees from Tim Blair. Blair points out that Rudd is doing his best to keep the insensitivity tradition alive. A nice quote from sill living treasure ‘Then-there-was- Gough’ in 1977:"Any sovereign nation has the right to determine how it will exercise its compassion and how it will increase its population." Read more »
Michael Egan has a cogent argument in The Australian regarding the need for the Labor Party to stand up to the unions. My arguments have centred on macroeconomic policy concerns and the need to avoid a wages explosion that will damage the economy and force a recession. Read more »
Paul Keating expresses support for Morris Iemma in NSW. I agree. His comments on the natural monopoly character of the distribution network but the competitive character of the generation network in an integrated eastern seaboard market shows that he understands the main issues. Read more »
Victoria’s 43,000 teachers secure wage increases of up to 15.2% as Premier Brumby caves in. Victoria’s teachers become the highest paid in the country with starting salaries for graduate teachers being $51,184 – an increase of $5000. Mr Brumby declared that the $2 billion budgetary cost would be offset by productivity improvements – teachers will work an extra 10 minutes per day. Read more »
This paper (that I learned about indirectly by reading an Andrew Leigh post) by Xavier Gine, Dean Karlan & Jonathon Zinman uses short-term incentives to deter people from smoking. It is an intriguing idea: Read more »
I have used a 4-digit code on my office phone to access stored phone messages at least once a day for the past three years. On Thursday I forgot it. Should I take up brain calisthenics? Where did I put my Nintendo?I had to use the search function on my blog to recall the name of the singer, you know, what's-his-name, who dealt with the issue of, what was that again, oh yeah, forgetfulness. Read more »
The US economy grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of 2008. It was not in recession.At Intrade the probability that the US has fallen into recession has fallen to 25%. (When I last looked it was 33%, look under Financial/Economic Numbers).Hat tip: Gregory Mankiw
Despite the moans of the Howard-hating left and the tedious paid anti-Liberal sections of the indigenous people industry it seems the Federal intervention to reduce the sexual molestation of indigenous children is working. Early days yet but the evidence is positive: Read more »
I have been ridiculed at public fora for suggesting that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island (ATSI) smoking rates are an overwhelmingly important cause of the discrepancy between indigenous and non-indigenous mortality rates. The general response has been: ‘Harry you have a bee in your bonnet about smoking that 'clouds' your judgement’. Read more »
The Australian Government's decision to increase the excise on so-called alcopops by 70% is excellent news. These sweet flavoured alcoholic concoctions are intended to create another generation of heavy drinkers in the face of a steady state decline in the demand for booze. Read more »
That 10,000 Chinese citizens were organised by the Chinese embassy in Australia and other groups to go to Canberra on Thursday to overwhelm and attack a much smaller group of pro-Tibetan demonstrators says more about the Communist society origins of the Chinese counter-demonstrators than about the lack of any political morality by the demonstrators. Read more »
This is the first of several posts that I will make on lung cancer. They are related to my work on cigarette smoking. Read more »
While I have posted at length on adaptation policies for dealing with climate change impacts on agriculture and biodiversity resources (also here) I have said nothing about the cities where most Australians live. Indeed COAG have recently moved to establish a Climate Change Adaptation Framework which includes in its brief analysis of these issues. Read more »
My PC had been running normally when it suddenly started giving popup messages suggesting it was about to collapse and was infected with trojans and spyware. A very official looking Windows-type message then urged a full system scan. Clicking on this connects you an apparently bogus spyware firm's website PC-Anti-Spyware which, you guessed it, will get rid of the trojans and spyware at a price. Read more »
I attended a seminar today given by Michael Carter on ‘Poverty Traps and Social Protection’ that is available in full online. Carter suggests that, because of poverty traps, ‘needs based’ targeting may lead to higher levels of long-term poverty than a modestly regressive targeting of those vulnerable to falling into poverty based on critical asset thresholds subject to risk. Read more »
Kevin Rudd couldn't make it to the State funeral of Labor legend John Button yesterday. He was visiting Cate Blanchett and her newborn baby in hospital. Cate will make it to the 'ideas summit' just 6 days after giving birth to her third child even though Rudd told her not to attend if she 'didn't feel up to it'. Read more »
The Four Corners show ‘Dirty Sexy Money’ screened tonight showed that the Labor Party includes more than a few schemers who have substituted making capital within their party for decent values and for the normal looney-tunes pursuits of Labor politicians. The show is well worth watching if you missed it –available online here. Read more »
I have never been one of Brendon Nelson’s greatest fans and preferred Tony Abbott to lead the Federal Liberal Party when that decision had to be made. Abbott is an intelligent conservative who predictably does not appeal to a mass audience. In addition I thought Nelson was a rather poor Minister for Education who operated in John Dawkins mode and was an indifferent Minister for Defence who approved the dubious Super Hornet deal. Read more »
Overworked and underpaid, yes, but at least I am still alive.*An Aussi slang term.
In a rare, worthwhile decision the Brumby Government in Victoria have got rid of the Tattersall's/Tabcorp poker machine monopoly in Victoria. In 4 years all of Victoria's 27,500 pokies (outside of Crown Casino) will cease being under the control of these duopolists. Individual clubs and pubs will be able to bid for up to 115 machines each. Read more »
Julie Bishop accuratetely described our PM as a 'walking slogan' - 'when I travel around the country', 'can I say', 'fresh ideas', 'You know something?'. Even Labor-supporter Michelle Grattan says Rudd speaks like a robot and provides some quaint examples. Read more »
As a keen though not highly-skilled golfer who has just joined a better than average private golf club I am interested in The Age’s discussion of what amounts to golf economics today. Golf courses are finding it difficult to compete with other physical recreations. There are several issues here. Read more »
The website of the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts has interesting postings on the implications of climate change for the National Reserve System (NRS) for conserving biodiversity. Jennifer Marohasy’s blog has a scornful critique of the Rudd Government’s proposal*to expand the reserve system apparently seeing solutions lying in private sector activity. Read more »
Andrew Leigh comments on Simon Chapman’s interesting proposal to pay aboriginals to stop smoking. Why not give such schemes a trial? Read more »
RUDD: Mr President, you said that you had a warm regard for me because from a Texan point of view you found me to be a reasonably straight shooter. I therefore designate you as an honorary Queenslander.In the great state of Australia (!), I come from the great state of Queensland (!).It may surprise you that it's bigger than Texas.(laughter)
But can I say - but can I say quickly …
BUSH: Can you recover nicely, yeah? (laughter) Read more »
Last year I cited some studies by Claudia Hensche which suggested that 80% of lung cancer deaths could be avoided through use of CT scans. Read more »
The proposal to increase the drinking age in Victoria from 18 to 21 is back on the table. It will be considered by the State government if current policy efforts to restrict binge drinking fail. Read more »
While I lived in Thailand in the 1980s I always appreciated the possibility of cheap local dental and health care. It was easy to find well-qualified, English-speaking dentists and doctors – an incidental bonus was that the nurses who looked after you were often extremely attractive. The cost of these services was a fraction (about ½ as I recall) of the cost of the services in Australia. Read more »
Laurie Ferguson, parliamentary secretary for multicultural affairs, says that because Australian families are ‘white flighting’ - withdrawing their kids from public schools and placing them in church or private schools to avoid unsought impacts migrant communities on the schools - that more needs to be done to avoid children from places like Africa, who had grown up in refugee camps and had li Read more »
Unending piles of work - writing exams, marking assignments, complying with bureaucracy - have muted my sense of the joy-of-life over the past few days. Life feels like one hassled, pointless, industrial-strength march towards boot hill.
The following from John S. and Lena provided comic relief.
I've been busy and found it difficult to assign time to assessing the budget. Clearly the Labor Party has inherited a fabulously prosperous economy - that the terms of trade is due to increase by so much over the next year is astounding and should dominate our impressions of where the Australian economy is going.
The bugdet response has been to award miserly tax cuts to lower income groups and to defer them for higher income groups and to run a massive budget surplus. Much of the surplus is to end up in investment funds to be spent on infrastructure, health and education. Read more »
The ACCC should object to the proposed takeover by Westpac of the St George Bank on the grounds that it will reduce competition. My guess however is that Treasurer Swan will have already given indications that the merger be permitted. Read more »
The ACCC should object to the proposed takeover by Westpac of the St George Bank on the grounds that it will reduce competition. My guess however is that Treasurer Swan will have already given indications that the merger be permitted. Read more »
I posted recently on the booming market in Thai exports of health services. Americans and Europeans are travelling in droves to Thailand to take advantage of lower costs of health services there. I sent a copy of the post to a well-known Australian trade theorist and his immediate response was – why doesn’t Australia get in on this act? Read more »
I’ve been too busy to follow the recent news on gambling contracts in Victoria in detail. But there is a smell around this issue that makes me suspicious. Read more »
I posted last week on the teachers’ pay decision in Victoria and the dangerous potential for flow on effects that will drive high inflation and create a much larger pool of unemployed. I indicated that I hoped to be wrong on this issue - I lived through the misery of high cost-push inflation and high unemployment during the 1970s and 1980s. It is no joke. Read more »
All my long held criticisms of Labor's IR reforms - that they will trigger job losses, worsen inflation and increase interest rates have been supported by the Commonwealth Treasury in its analysis of the plan to abolish WorkChoices. According to The Australian: Read more »
The Director of the alcohol and drug service at St Vincent's Hospital Dr Alex Wodak proposes selling cannabis in post offices to cut consumption. He made the proposal for taxed and legalised cannabis at the Mardi Grass festival in Nimbin on Sunday (!), but said he would be happy to express his opinion to the Federal Government. Read more »
My colleague Don Harding has a forceful piece on monetary policy in today's Australian. He argues that the RBA has not tightened monetary policy since the real rate of interest has fallen slightly. True Don but those nominal increases in interest rates do impact on consumers faced with assets not appreciating at the rate of inflation so that borrowers can take out loans to cover their higher nominal costs without any real impact. Read more »
A few thousand electricity workers threaten to derail the privatisation of the electricity sector in NSW. Morris Iemma will either face a huge fight with this unrepresentative rabble and lose or stick to his guns and change the nature of the Labor Party for the better. Read more »
This paper by David Cutler and Edward Glaeser is worth a look. Read more »
I found this article from Commentary, ‘1948, Israel, and the Palestinians’ of interest. I am always surprised by the vehemence of the left's hatred for Israel.
I would be astonished if Troy Buswell gets a kick out of smelling the seat that a woman has recently sat in. I assume his actions in sniffing the seat of a female Liberal Party staffer (in her presence) were a questionable joke that has gone seriously wrong. You wonder about the motives of the woman concerned in making her outrage known to be public and in publicly crucifying Buswell in front of his colleagues and his family. Read more »
The 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey has just been released (here). This is by far the most useful and accurate study of drug use trends in Australia. Read more »
It will take years - possibly decades - for the wickedness of the Howard Government to loosen its grip on Australian society. And it is our young brightest minds, our ‘future’ who are paying the highest price. Read more »
I have emphasised before that the effects of increased fuel prices will eventually come to reduce fuel demands and create incentives for new sources of supply - these reflect supply elasticity effects and cross price elasticity effects. In the US - which purchases one third of the world's petroleum - this seems to have already occurred with the first ann Read more »
As I have remarked before it seems to be overwhelmingly the children of migrants - particularly Asian migrants - in Australia who attend private schools and participate in such things as music performances. Long-term residents place a lower emphasis on the value of education and the value of developing difficult-to-acquire skills such as playing the violin or the piano. Read more »
I waited for my invitation to the "Australia 2020 Summit" but it never came. I think someone spread the malicious rumour that I didn't vote for Labor in the last election and that I think Kevin Rudd is a peanut. And I think I know who started that story. Read more »
I waited for my invitation to the "Australia 2020 Summit" but it never came. I think someone spread the malicious rumour that I didn't vote for Labor in the last election and that I think Kevin Rudd is a peanut. And I think I know who started that story. Read more »
I have always enjoyed maths and used to try to solve elementary maths problems as a school kid. I can remember with joy finally solving a simple-to-state problem after hours of thinking about it. Often the solution popped out of my head almost involuntarily after I had spent a lot of time thinking about it* and then almost abandoning the effort. I recalled some history here in an early post that aroused no interest at all. Read more »
Sovereign risk refers to the possibility that government can change legislation so that they can seize property without any possibility of adequate compensation.Tony Harris in today's AFR (subscription required) argues that no issue of sovereign risk arises because Tabcorp and Tattersall's gaming licences were not renewed by the Victorian Government. Read more »
I've been couch-potatoeing the last few days for long periods as I watched the US Masters Championship at Augusta on Foxtel. There is little doubt that Tiger Woods is a freakishly capable golfer. At 32 years of age he is still in the early phases of a career that may mark him as one of the greatest golfers in history. Read more »
I always try to emphasise to economics students the importance of (a) cross price elasticity effects on demands and (b) the supply effects of price changes. Read more »
An article Bush Bites Back in Saturday’s Age provides a perspective on the Brumby Government’s daft ‘Food Bowl Modernisation Project’ which will cost $2 billion ($1 billion from recent Rudd Government generosity) to plug leaks and evaporation losses in irrigation canals in order to increase suppliers of water for all – for local farmers and for city dwellers alike – the la Read more »
This article in the NYT urges candidates in the current US presidential campaign to move with pace to adopt the urgings of the FDA with respect to tobacco regulation. Specifically they urge that nicotine be registered as an addictive drug and be regulated by the FDA on this basis. Read more »
I have long been interested in the phenomenon of hormesis and teach this topic to environmental economics students. This idea – developed by toxicologists – suggests that low concentrations of certain apparently dangerous substances (gamma rays, dioxins, even pesticides, may be good for your health. The health damage function is therefore J or U-shaped. Read more »
I have repeatedly referred over the past few years to the effects of rising debt in the Australian economy – most recently here. Australia has been on one huge borrowing binge that follows closely - if not so severely - what has happened in the US and the UK. Read more »
Last Thursday I went to a talk by Professor Mike Young on sustainable management plans for the Murray-Darling Basin run by the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow pub in Melbourne. Read more »
Last year I cited some studies by Claudia Hensche which suggested that 80% of lung cancer deaths could be avoided through use of CT scans. Read more »
While I lived in Thailand one of my favourite Thai soups had as its solid ingredient bitter melon often stuffed with a meat such as pork. Bitter melon is now readily available in most Australian fruit markets – particularly those with Asian customers. I have read that it has been suggested as a cure for HIV and other ailments. Read more »
In advance of the Productivity Commission report being released Melbourne’s Pravda has come out strongly in support of paid maternity leave for all ‘working’ women with a front-page editorial (it could Read more »
UK consumers are even more indebted than those Read more »
