John Quiggin

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...

Like everyone else, I expected a Labor victory in the election. I expected good things from that, and I see lots of bad consequences from the actual outcome. Still, my personal disappointment is muted by the fact that I found the campaign so utterly depressing. The shift to positivity I noted a couple of weeks ago only lasted for a day. I saw the positive ad I wrote about only once. By election day, like the majority of the Australian public, I just wanted it to be over. The...

The first proper[1] review of Economics in Two Lessons has appeared, in Inside Story. It’s by Richard Holden[2] and really gets the point of the book. The final paras: Chapters twelve to sixteen deal with what policymakers should do, and here Quiggin’s passion is evident. Moreover, what comes through perhaps more than anything is a sense of balance. There’s what we might want to do and then there’s what the immutable laws of economics — so neatly laid down in the preceding...

Launch of Economics in Two Lessons ANU today (6pm Thursday 16th May) at Fred Gruen Seminar Room, HW Arndt Building ANU Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

I’ve got quite a few events coming up in the next couple of weeks.* On 13 and 14 May, I’m running a workshop at the University of Queensland on Epistemic & Personal Transformation:Dealing with the Unknowable and Unimaginable. Details here.* On Thursday 16 May, I’ll be at ANU for the official Australian launch of Economics in Two Lessons.  Details are here. If campaigning permits, Andrew Leigh will say a few words about the book. There will be a launch at Avid Reader in Brisbane...

The trade war between the US (or rather the Trump Administration) and China (or rather Xi Jinping) is heating up again. The standard view seems to be that, because of the massive imbalance in merchandise trade between the two countries, Trump has the advantage. China could retaliate by dumping US bonds, but this is seen as a weapon too dangerous to use. I don’t think this exhausts the options. As we’ve seen in Australia, the Chinese government can do all sorts of things to...

Reviews of Economics in Two Lessons are starting to come in. Here’s one, favorable but not rapturous from Diane Coyle. Another, from David Gordon at the Mises Institute is, not surprisingly, more negative. The main (though not the only) complaint is that I treat Hazlitt as a One Lesson neoclassical economist. More precisely, in relation to opportunity cost “[Quiggin] applies the concept as it is used in neoclassical economics, but Hazlitt was an Austrian and does not use the...

That’s the headline for my latest piece in Inside Story, along with the short version of my answer. The long answer is that, even with dubious modelling choices and extreme parameter assumptions, Brian Fisher of BAEcon* comes up with estimates of about 2 per cent of GDP, trivial compared to the potential cost. So, he uses the same presentational trick he’s been using since the first ABARE modelling exercise back in 1996, turning an annual flow into a present value over ten years to...

The first half of the 2019 election campaign was the worst I’ve ever seen, especially relative to the possibility for real debate. Both sides ran continuous attack ads focusing on the opposing leader, playing into the gladiatorial model favoured by the Press Gallery. Labor, in particular, seemed to have forgotten it had any policy offer. Since Labor’s policy launch, things seem to have improved substantially. The fact that the launch took place at all, rather than being reduced to...

I’ve been generally appalled by the performance of the media in the current election. This article by David Crowe in the Nine/Fairfax papers is the perfect illustration. Asking what is wrong with the current election, Crowe concludes The fact is that neither leader has inflicted a killer blow against the other. The idea that an election is a gladiatorial contest between “leaders”, staged for the entertainment of the Press Gallery has never been put more simply and clearly....