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The third in the famous trilogy of spurious Chinese curses that begins with “May you live in interesting times” is “May all your wishes come true”. I may have triggered this curse with a piece I wrote for The Conversation in March. headlined “Dutton wants a ‘mature debate’ about nuclear power. By the time we’ve had one, new plants will be too late to replace coal” which ended Talk about hypothetical future technologies is, at this point, nothing more than a distraction. If Dutton...

My latest in The Guardian henever I mention concepts such as gross domestic product (GDP), there’s a high probability that arguments about the merits of “growth” and “degrowth” will erupt. Almost invariably, these arguments are stuck in a conceptual framework that’s 50 years out of date, or even more. The national accounting system, of which GDP is a central part, was developed in the 1930s. It was designed to measure the working of the industrial economy that had emerged in the...

from Peter Radford “Economics has become irrelevant.” PART ONE Oh my.  Apparently Brad DeLong and I have the same problem.  He, of course, is part of the elite club.  I am decidedly not.  So it is quite a shock to share something. What? He set out to write an 800 word review of Dan Davies’ new book and ended up about 5,000 words later still writing.  I set out to write 1,000 words on William Janeway’s recent article on mesoeconomics, and here I am nearly 5,000 words later, still writing. ...

From The Conversation Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s plan to build seven nuclear power plants in Australia has attracted plenty of critical attention. But there’s a striking feature which has received relatively little discussion or criticism: the nuclear plants would be publicly owned and operated, similar to the National Broadband Network (NBN). On the contrary, it received enthusiastic endorsement from free-market advocates such as The Australian’s Judith Sloan, who...

From The Guardian The release of recent data suggesting that inflation appears to be stuck at 4%, above the Reserve Bank of Australia’s target range of 2% to 3%, has raised plenty of concern among economic and political commentators. These commentators might be surprised to learn that many, perhaps most, macroeconomists who have looked at the question have concluded that a 4% inflation rate would be the ideal target, at least providing that wages and other incomes kept pace....

After decades of lobbying and advocacy by Canadian trade unions, the federal Parliament unanimously passed legislation to ban the use of replacement workers (or ‘scabs’) during strikes and lockouts in federally regulated industries (covering about 1 million workers in industries like including finance, interprovincial transportation, and telecommunications). The legislation will take effect in June, 2025. It was supported by all parties in the House of Commons: Liberals, NDP, Greens,...

from Lars Syll So, certainly, both non-theorists and some theorists have little patience for research that displays mathematical ingenuity but has no value as social science. But defining this work exactly is impossible. This sort of work is like pornography quite simple to recognize when one sees it. Jeffrey Ely As researchers, we (mostly) want to try to understand and explain reality. How we do this differs between various disciplines and thought traditions. Creating a ‘map’ at a 1:1...

AB was off the internet. Just about the time I called our hardware computer company, we came back up again.

from Lars Syll Beyond the significant financial expenses required to conduct RCTs … critics have raised concerns about considerable opportunity costs associated with their privileged status in programme and policy assessment. These costs result from how an over-emphasis on experimental evaluations in evidence generation systematically undermines alternative research methods potentially better equipped to answer questions about causal mechanisms (or the channels by which interventions work...

I have been very alarmed by the risk of a Chinese (PRC) invasion of Taiwan (province of the RC). The main reason is that the most Xi Jin Ping announced that he has instructed his generals (and admirals) to be develope the capicto to invade by 2027 (the 30s anniversary of the return of Hong Kong to the PRC). This does not imply an invasion then. Landing craft and landing ships (please don’t ask me to explain or define the distinction) would...