John Quiggin

A few weeks ago, the Chinese embassy leaked a list of grievances against the Australian government to the Nine Newspapers. I’ve seen lots of references to items in the list, but searching for the whole thing produces very little. It turns out that Nine published an image of the list, but did not convert it into text, and no other media organization appears to have bothered to do so. In the interests of producing an accessible document, I spent the five minutes required to do this....

My latest piece in Inside Story, and also the Canberra Times, is headlined Punching above our weight looks like getting us knocked out (CT slightly varied). The key point is that having picked a fight with China, the government is alienating potential allies through its climate donothingism. Key para Australia is a lightweight, and we are fighting out of our class. If we want to succeed on issues like our trade dispute with China, we can’t afford to poke our potential allies in the...

Slightly behind the pack, it seems, I’ve suddenly started hearing about “ergodicity economics”, presented as an alternative to expected utility (EU) theory. Commenter James asked me about it here, and I also received from a colleague a copy of a paper in Nature, by Ole Peters, who appears to be the main developer of this idea. The essential idea of ergodicity is that the long-run distribution of outcomes for a dynamic process should match the uncertainty of the process at any point...

Some tentative thoughts, for a chapter I’m writing about the decline of neoliberalism, and the crony capitalism I see as replacing it (unless we can achieve a leftwing alternative) An important difference between Trumpism[1] and neoliberalism (in both hard and soft variants) is that Trumpism is associated with crony capitalism, rather than global corporations and finance. This is obscured to some extent by shared interest in corporate tax cuts and deregulation. But it’s a clear...

That’s the title of my latest piece in The Conversation. Key para Just as much (or more than) the owners of electric vehicles, the owners of conventional vehicles pay a mere fraction of what they should. Increasing what the owners of electric-powered vehicles pay is a second-best solution that might move us further away from first best. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

As was the case with Economics in Two Lessons, I’ve been struggling with the material for my book-in-progress, The Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. But I’ve now managed to put together a synopsis I can work with. I’d very much appreciate comments, including but not limited to: topics I should be covering; issues raised by the brief summaries; and useful references. Thanks for comments so far, and thanks in advance for more. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

The last (I hope) extract from the climate change chapter of Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. I’m in two minds about whether this is really needed. The group of pro-nuclear environmentalists seems to be shrinking towards a hard core who can’t be convinced (and some of them, like Shellenberger turn out to have been concern trolls all along). But every now and then I run across people who seem open-minded enough, but haven’t caught up with the bad news on nuclear. Debates...

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on. To be clear, the sandpit is for regular commenters to pursue points that distract from regular discussion, including conspiracy-theoretic takes on the issues at hand. It’s not meant as a forum for visiting conspiracy theorists, or trolls posing as such. Like this:Like Loading...

Back again with another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. If you would like to receive my (hopefully) regular email news, please sign up using the following link http://eepurl.com/dAv6sX You can also follow me on Twitter @JohnQuiggin, at my Facebook public page   and at my Economics in Two Lessons page Like this:Like Loading...

Another excerpt from the climate chapter of my book-in-progress, Economic Consequences of the Pandemic. Comments, constructive criticism and compliments all appreciated. Economists have long been enamoured of simple and universal solutions to the problem of greenhouse gases emissions. The key to these solutions is imposing a price on emissions, through a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. With a carbon tax, firms are required to pay a fixed price for each ton of carbon...