So a new firmware update for the iPhone is out. One of the big features is changes to Google Maps that will allow public transport route directions, plannings and timetables. You can see how useful that is with the image at the side that tells you precisely how much time you have to get to a train or bus. Read more »
Is there an arbitrage opportunity in the market for Lego parts? From GeekDad: Read more »
I have waxed lyrical about the importance of font choice on this blog. One of the things that struck me about the iPhone was the beauty of the numerical typeface. It is, of course, Helvetica. But everytime you type a number, you can appreciate it’s clarity. It is a joy to use. (And no that isn’t going over-board, you philistines!)
In Slate today, an article about how deep this goes within Apple. Read more »
For some reason, this new paper on blogging by Gaudel, Mathieu and Peroni was associated in my mind with this article in Slate on movie uploader, aXXo. Read more »
One the best sitcoms in recent years, The Big Bang Theory is back this week on Channel 9 at 8pm Wednesday. I cannot recommend it more highly. Read more »
Thinking about this exchange.
What is the difference between a $1 surplus and a $1 deficit? Answer $2.
What is the difference between a $4 surplus and a $2 surplus? Answer $2.
Multiply by $10 billion and enjoy.
And the point: it is change in fiscal position that matters, not the description of where it ends up. Read more »
So FuelWatch has been defeated. Well near as I can tell the problem identified by the ACCC in its Petrol Price Inquiry — that the Trade Practices Act may not protect against information sharing on price and other conditions by competitors — remains. The question is: will the ACCC now test the waters in the Courts on such price sharing or will the Federal government step up to the plate and actually introduce the real reforms highlighted by the ACCC’s inquiry? Read more »
One of the problems with my five part series on broadband this week is that I am speaking exclusively in the context of the current Australian debates and the immediate choices we are facing. That plus a few unfortunate cut-outs of material from what was published may lead to some confusion as to my stance. Read more »
Why our toll roads have the same price regardless of time of day has always been beyond me? Not only does it reduce total revenue raised it also doesn’t help management the efficiency of the road system, causes congestion and so is bad for the environment. Read more »
In today’s Age is the first of a five part series I have written on the broadband debate. I start with the value of broadband and tomorrow will at the case for broadband as a public good. Most of the arguments are familiar to regular readers of this blog but it is good to have the opportunity to discuss the issue outside the constrains of a few hundred words. Read more »
Greg Mankiw links to GRE test results (the test done before graduate school) that show scores by discipline. Physics ranks first with economics number 4. Public administration is a bit of a worry. Read more »
Author, Michael Crichton passed away today. I have read pretty much all of his books. While usually I might mourn for the loss of future output, that wasn’t really my first reaction. When it comes down to it, his recent work often left me feeling a little unsatisfied; although not necessarily in a bad way. Crichton was responsible for Jurassic Park but also State of Fear. The former we all know. The latter questioned global warming and climate change. Read more »
I am pretty sure I am not getting any real work done today. It is just a waiting game for history. According to Justin Wolfers, who pals around with Ian Ayres on the Freakonomics blog, the first polls will close at 11am (Eastern Australia Summer Time). One of those is Virginia and that will give us a big indication of how things are going. Read more »
With all of the insurance aspects of the financial crisis being flung around, Bob Solow provides a quick primer. [HT: Harry Clarke] Read more »
As I have noted before (here and here), “moral hazard” appears to be one of those terms thrown about to oppose something but without much care as to whether it really is an issue. An alert reader has sent me an example of what appears to be another misunderstanding. Read more »
(The blog post is cowritten with Rabee Tourky of The University of Queensland.)
Recent events have demonstrated that the financial sector is exposed to systemic risk. That is, the possibility that many financial institutions fail at the same time. The concern is that should this negative outcome realise, there will be a dramatic fall in liquidity that will impact on the real economy. Read more »
Below is an article from Communications Day on my testimony at the Senate Broadband Inquiry.
I must admit that there is an opportunity for the Government to do something quite useful with all of the money they are proposing to spend and that is to, if Telstra is the preferred supplier, to make as a pre-condition of that that Telstra spin off the cable network and divest its interest in Foxtel. That would allow for the potential of competition and the removal of regulatory issues. Read more »
Ten or so years ago, there were numerous stories about the increasing pay going to TV actors as series became popular. Ted Danson in Cheers, Frasier and all six of them in Friends (who pooled their bargaining power much to the apparent generosity of Jennifer Aniston). Economic theory predicts this. As the series becomes popular, the risks of changing lead actors become higher and so they can negotiate much better deals. Read more »
It turns out that when the boat is going under you can rely on your fellow passengers but otherwise stay closely behind the crew and see what they do. Click here for “Noblesse Oblige? Determinants of Survival in a Life and Death Situation” by Bruno Frey, David Savage, and Benno Torgler. Here is the abstract: Read more »
The Federal government has moved to offer mortgage funds a guarantee which will allow them to unfreeze their funds while presumably preventing a run. Of course, to do this, they will have to become a bank or at least more like a bank. That means keeping capital reserves, the one thing that distinguished those funds from a bank. Read more »
I have spent more than my fair share of time testifying before Parliamentary committees this year. Today, it is the Senate and it is about the national broadband network. I’ll be telling them that if the government really wants to do something on broadband right now don’t do half-measures. Do it properly and get the regulations right, the technology choice open and allow for future competition. Read more »
I had no idea that he was even American. Click here for the stunning news. Read more »
People keep asking what I think will happen to the economy. I guess this comes with the trade. But as anyone who knows me, knows, I am not a macroeconomist, empirical economist or anyone who might actually have some decent knowledge or expertise in global economic fluctuations. Sure, I agitated about closing of certain financial markets but that is a long way from knowing what is going to happen. Read more »
Claims today that the baby boom is pushing maternity hospitals over the limit.
The maternity wards at the Royal Prince Alfred, a major Sydney hospital, have reached capacity because of a jump in the birth rate, causing some mothers to be transferred to a neighbouring hospital.
Read more »
I have an opinion piece in The Age today on financial sloshing.
Put a premium on time to study the bank guarantee instead
Joshua Gans, The Age, 24th October, 2008. Read more »
There is a long-standing view that the Internet is the keystone example of why unfettered research in academia is a good idea. Michael Nielsen challenges that canonical story: Read more »
News today that the Federal government is considering putting in an explicit premium on some bank accounts — likely those with balances in excess of $1 million. I am in favour of a payment for an insurance service and so thinking about this is a good idea. That said, while I understand the desire to charge the wealthy for insurance first, in this situation, isn’t it surely the case that enforcing the premium will be difficult. Read more »
“It will exacerbate moral hazard” has become the standard criticism of most government action going on to deal with the financial crisis. I wince almost every time as commentators rarely identify actual moral hazard. Let’s take an example from an opinion piece by Milind Saythe (from the University of Canberra): Read more »
Not sure what to do with your time now that the financial crisis is apparently over? A suggestion. Read more »
It is hard to think of a more inevitable Nobel prize winner than Paul Krugman. And I guess today the Nobel committee agreed and awarded him the prize. Before he turned his career towards the popular, Krugman revolutionised trade theory, the theory of currency markets and economic geography. It was on the latter part that I had most interaction with him as his tutorial assistant for his 1994 Stanford class on the subject. Read more »
The Federal government has gone further than anyone expected and guaranteed all deposits for three years while injecting another $4 billion into the RMBS market. As I discussed earlier today, this is a sensible move in the current crisis and should go a long way towards controlling fear and panic outbreaks. Read more »
Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff have a new book out, The Art of Strategy. I saw a pre-release copy and it is as good an introduction in game theory as you are going to get.
Anyhow, on the book’s website is a fun set of games to actually try. Read more »
I have just finished reading Michael Heller’s The Gridlock Economy. This is a terrific book that describes what happens when there is too much ownership of complementary assets. For instance, when there is too diverse ownership of complementary patents, innovators attempting to launch products combining them are deterred by a patent thicket. When blocks of land are parceled up between different owners, developers face a holdout problem in acquiring the whole lot. Read more »
NASA could support space exploration by selling the broadcast rights to Martian landings.
Now that’s a good idea. There is more. Read more »
The RBA lowered interest rates by a percentage point yesterday and banks followed passing through 0.8 of that reduction. It isn’t complete pass-through as would occur when firms are competitive price takers but it was fairly substantial. Read more »
We are getting closer. I have installed GasBag but there doesn’t seem to be much Australian content. Read more »
I have been working my way through the Productivity Commission’s report on Paid Parental Leave. In it, they consider the Chapman-Higgins-Lin proposal for income-contingent loans (ICL) as a supplement to government provided paid maternity leave and dismiss it; despite its ‘conceptual elegance.’ Their argument is surprisingly weak and timid. Read more »
Andrew Leigh and I have tried hard to get this one but te 2008 Ig-Nobel prize winner in economics is:
Geoffrey Miller, Joshua Tybur and Brent Jordan of the University of New Mexico, USA, for discovering that a professional lap dancer’s ovulatory cycle affects her tip earnings.
Truly deserving. Read more »
Christopher Joye and I have an opinion piece in The Australian today on the government’s intervention to increase liquidity in mortgage backed securities markets.
Keep non-bank lenders afloat
Christopher Joye and Joshua Gans, The Australian, 2nd October, 2008 Read more »
Yesterday afternoon I presented the Xiaokai Yang Memorial Lecture at the Annual Australian Conference of Economists. I had first met Xiaokai when I was a student at Stanford and heard about his tales of imprisonment during the Cultural Revolution, his discovery of economics and going to Princeton at a relatively late age to do a PhD. Read more »
I have a piece in The Age today on the financial meltdown and the Garnaut report (why not economise on the day’s big stories?).
Meltdown hurts climate for change
Joshua Gans, The Age
1st October 2008 Read more »
… check this out. And if you think that is familiar but can’t quite work out where look at this; well worth the rental by the way. Read more »
Christopher Joye and I had a piece in Crikey today on the government intervention in home mortgage securities. It is over the fold.
Crikey, 30 September 2008. Read more »
Derek Slater and Tim Wu think that customers could build their own fibre connections to the net. Here is their paper. I haven’t read it yet but as I mentioned some months ago it sounds like an excellent idea. I have had a related idea here. Read more »
What is clear is that when it came to the crunch, as policy-makers searched for ways to save the financial world, the tools they used were stock-standard traditional Keynes. In many respects, it was as if the frontier of macroeconomics had not changed from the Neoclassical synthesis of the 1950s. The pump is being primed and liquidity is being injected into markets — by both traditional means and nationalisation. Keynes himself must be bouncing up and down with joy in his grave. Read more »
The Sydney Morning Herald has an article today that quotes me on what might happen when the means test for the baby bonus comes in at the beginning of next year.
He said a similar phenomenon could be expected up to the end of the year.
“The good news is that it won’t affect too many families.
Read more »
The newspapers are reporting on a scheme to save water by installing meters on toilets and having households pay by the flush. Well actually not quite that. They want people to pay for their water on the basis of outflows. Read more »
This article marks the final part in my five part series, “Better know a broadband debate.” Today’s instalment, “a new hope” in which I discuss things other than broadband ‘pipes.’
Behind every great fibre-optic network is a great package of applications
Joshua Gans, The Age, 14th November, 2008. Read more »
In which I explore the hopes for competition. Basically, the choice is up to the government: competition or the money. All past governments have chosen the money and we have paid for it. Tomorrow: some other broadband policies other than infrastructure that would make a big difference.
Government has missed the message on telcos
Joshua Gans, The Age, 14th November, 2008. Read more »
Chumby is now available in Australia (click here). This is a little device that I guess is best described as a glorified alarm clock. Here is David Pogue’s review. Read more »
Today’s installment of “is there really enough to this debate to write five articles on broadband?” is about the type of broadband we get and the type of broadband we want. Tomorrow: the competition and regulation mess.
Symmetry, no caps and roving usage will be real gains
Joshua Gans, The Age, 12th November, 2008. Read more »
Today’s broadband piece in The Age is on whether broadband is a public good.
From a taxpayer’s perspective, high-speed broadband is a high-odds gamble
Joshua Gans, The Age, 11th November 2008 Read more »
John Asker has a terrific paper that looks inside the ‘New York Postage Stamp Dealer Cartel.’ This is a cartel that operated amongst 11 or 12 postage stamp dealers in New York to push down prices at various auctions for postage stamps. Now you might not think this is the most significant cartel in the world but it was significant enough to them to devise an elaborate mechanism including a knockout auction that determined the cartel’s reservation price as well as the side payments to each other. Read more »
Pong on a white board. Will it ever end? Read more »
I am watching CNN and it has gone all Star Wars on us. Wolf Blitzer is talking to come correspondence via hologram. She looks to us (and maybe to Wolf) like she is really there in the studio. Funniest thing I have seen. I guess it is only a few more short years before we have Wolf himself appear right in our living room. Read more »
Simon Anderson and I have just completed our paper on TiVo. You can read it here.
For those interested, here are my slides on “Emerging Concepts in Market Design.” Read more »
Now that the financial system has stabilised, there are many plans out there to deal with home loan restructuring: you know the stuff that got us into this mess in the first place. They are nicely summarised by The Economist. In reading this, what struck me is how these were all anticipated 5 years ago in Australia with the Prime Minister’s Home Ownership Taskforce. Read more »
The emissions trading scheme is due to be put in place by 2010. The Treasury modelling indicates that there are good reasons to keep to that date. As I read it, the main driver is that the capital stock needs dramatic replacement. Some of that would be happening as a matter of course so any delay is a lost opportunity to do that in the right way. Read more »
So I am at the PerCapita Policy Exchange conference. The theme is on market design and I will be speaking on that topic in a little while (I’ll post a link to the slides in the next few days).
The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, is speaking as I write this. Read more »
It turns out that when the boat is going under you can rely on your fellow passengers but otherwise stay closely behind the crew and see what they do. Click here for “Noblesse Oblige? Determinants of Survival in a Life and Death Situation” by Bruno Frey, David Savage, and Benno Torgler. Here is the abstract: Read more »
BTalk Australia runs some very interesting podcasts on research of relevance to business in Australia. I did an interview with them last week (click here) on competition in the electricity industry in Australia. I spoke about this paper co-authored with Frank Wolak. Read more »
Rabee Tourky guest blogs at Kalimna on the financial crisis. After dismissing other explanations, his take is that it is all a result of missing markets: Read more »
Like so many blogs before me, following comments that appeared on a post the other day, I now need to state a comments policy. It is simple, I get to judge whether a comment is suitable or not for this blog. Likely criteria upon which a comment will be deleted include profanity and impolite attacks on other commentors. If you want to engage in that, the blogosphere has free entry (elsewhere). Read more »
An article in the New York Times today about attempts to reduce computer boot time. The goal apparently is to get to 30 seconds. If you start your computer once per day, that means that after just 10 years you will have saved almost 9 days of your life. Read more »
How do you get knowledge of your ideas out there? Academics are told to present at conferences or publish papers.
The video showed how, in a few easy steps, the Nintendo Wii remote controller — or “Wiimote” — could transform a normal video screen into a virtual reality display, with graphics that seemed to pop through the screen and into the living room. So far, the video has been seen more than six million times.
…
Read more »
Andrew Odlyzko reminds use that content is not king, connectivity is when it comes to the Internet. Moves to block network neutrality are likely to be misplaced as they rely on a content mentality (specifically, streaming movies which is a waste of bandwidth). Read more »
Of the government provided websites, GroceryChoice is a failure (and worryingly useless) while FuelWatch remains non-existant. Today, what amounts to a Child Care watch was launched. At mychild.gov.au you can search providers of various child care in your locality and you can easily see what their charges are and what you are paying for. It appears the place to start in searching for these services. Read more »
Terry McCrann doesn’t think much of high wealth decision-makers:
No one is going to put money into a bill, secured only by the bank and its double-A rating, when they can get a government guarantee for putting $5 million or $500 million into a deposit.
Apparently, so long as they face any risk associated with an option, they will choose safety. Read more »
In today’s Age, ACTU President, Sharan Burrow, and my AussieMac co-author, Christopher Joye, move beyond the conventional short-term issues associated with the financial crisis and remind us that governments have done little to insure those most at risk in the real economy from the consequences of economic shocks. Read more »
Ken Arrow says that we are not done yet in working out how to understand financial crises. Read more »
The Senate Report into the FuelWatch bill has been released. One interesting recommendation:
The committee recommends that any data collected by Fuelwatch be made available by the ACCC to independent academic researchers to allow open analysis of the scheme.
Read more »
I have an opinion piece in The Age today explaining the rationale behind the government’s move on deposit guarantees.
A guarantee against panic
Joshua Gans, The Age, 14th October, 2008. Read more »
I must admit that I was a little worried a couple of days ago when the government moved to guarantee $20,000 per deposit account. For starters, this was an explicit guarantee and so woke up everyone to the fact that whatever guarantees we currently had were implicit at best. Secondly, while this might cover 85 percent of accounts and looked ‘fair’ the role of the guarantee was not to do this. Instead, we want a guarantee with ensure that sparks don’t become fires. And when it comes down to it, $20,000 caps cover a fraction of the kindling in the pot. Read more »
Apparently we will find out on November 23 when their new album comes out.
Earlier this year, soft drink manufacturer Dr Pepper offered to send a free can of the beverage to “everyone in America” (excluding ex-GNR members Slash and Buckethead) if Chinese Democracy were to arrive anytime during the 2008 calendar year.
I wonder what happened to their stock price today. Read more »
Last night I was invited to speak at the University of Melbourne, Department of Economics, Annual Honours Alumni Function. The choice of topic was climate change policy. Over the fold is a transcript of what I said.
Climate Change Policy
Joshua Gans (8th October 2008) Read more »
Occasionally you hear statements that HECS and related schemes are not necessary because they could be privately provided. Well, this tale from MIT suggests otherwise:
An e-mail message sent to students Monday at MIT Sloan School of Management:
Dear Sloan M.B.A. student,
Read more »
In the Wall Street Journal, Australian journalist, Janet Albrechtsen gets on her high horse and tells the US how great Australia is on housing. Apparently, she claims that houses are not collateral in Australia and that if you take out a loan, regardless, you are liable for it. I am no expert on bankrupcy law but I assumed we had them and that these put creditors at some risk.
She goes on … Read more »
I have an article in The Age today about the Productivity Commission’s paid parental leave report.
Parental Leave: PC Proposals Fall Short
Joshua Gans, The Age, 6th October, 2008. Read more »
So Australia is about to have reach-through royalties on artistic work. Basically, if you have a piece of art and manage to get more than $1,000 for it, then on re-sale, the buyer has to pay the original artist 5% of the subsequent sales price. The news discussion is all about helping indigenous artists. But I must admit that my first reaction is that this could hardly help. Read more »
Google have released their 2001 index so you can see what search was like in ancient times. Of course, the first thing I did was google my past self with the following result:
Here is what the same search looks like today. Read more »
I had a piece in Crikey today on trade-exposed industries and the Garnaut report. Read more »
Jessica Irvine has a very good piece in the Sydney Morning Herald today about the recent issues in competition in banking in Australia.
The global financial crisis has endangered one of Australia’s favourite pastimes: bank bashing. Just as the crippling drought made it unacceptable for city-slickers to complain about rain, the credit crisis has made it unacceptable to complain about the mega profits generated by our cosy banking industry.
Read more »