John Quiggin

A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on. 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...

Lockdowns work. That’s the evidence from many different countries now, including Australia. To be more precise, lockdowns reduce the effective reproductive rate of the virus to the point where it is below 1, meaning that, on average, each infected person passes the disease on to less than one other person. As long as this is sustained, the number of new cases will keep declining, as we have now seen. Potentially, as has been claimed to be the case in China, it will reach zero....

As soon as the government released its modelling of the pandemic a few days ago, I realised something was badly wrong. The modelling showed infections increasing even under lockdowns, which obviously wasn’t happening. The crucial parameter here is R, the number of new infections generated by each existing infection. If R is greater than 1, the number of infections grows exponentially, but if R is less than one, it declines, eventually approaching zero. The knife-edge case is R=1, when...

As part of my response to the pandemic, I’m looking at the way the undead ideas I attempted to kill off in my Zombie Economics have failed yet again. I;m doing it as a series in Independent Australia. The second instalment, Pandemic highlights problems with efficient-market hypothesis has just run. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

The government is undertaking a review of one of our central pieces of environmental law, the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Protection Act. They have a facility for quick comments of up to 300 words, as well as traditional submission (thanks to the Australian Conservation Foundation for the link). Here’s my 300 words The catastrophes that have afflicted Australia and the rest of the world over the last year, including coral bleaching, unprecedented wildfires and the...

Here are some comments I’ve written in a rapid response to Brendan Murphy’s recent press conference. (I haven’t yet seen even the summary of the modelling that has apparently been released, just a picture of flattened curves.) The idea of “flattening the curve” is fundamentally misleading, since it implies that most people will be infected until herd immunity is achieved, while the number of cases remains within the capacity of the health system. But assuming spare capacity of 2...

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...

I’m running behind, but here’s my latest piece in the Conversation. Although the situation is very different from that of 194t, this, from the White Paper on Full Employment is as relevant as ever Despite the need for more houses, food, equipment and every other type of product, before the war, not all those available for work were able to find employment or to feel a sense of security in their future. On the average during the twenty years between 1919 and 1939 more than one tenth...

Yesterday, I pointed out that the first instalment of the rescue package could be financed by cancelling the Stage 3 income tax cuts legislated for 2024-25. Today, the same suggestion is on the front page of the SMH. Morrison is apparently resisting the idea, but that can’t last long. Trying to keep one day ahead, I’ve turned my mind to how the Reserve Bank should operate during and after the crisis. The first step is to abandon inflation targeting once and for all. The policy of...