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What I’m listening to
Here are the podcasts I’m tracking at the moment, with a link to a notable recent episode. EconTalk – Lengthy interviews with experts on economics and social science. e.g. Acemoglu on Why Nations Fail...
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Is the future communist?
A common folk explanation for the triumph of capitalism over communism goes along these lines: Communism has some lovely notions about sharing wealth between people in proportion to their needs and...
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Colliders confounding causality
I had noticed the ‘collider’ sampling bias before but never thought about how common it must be: Sampling error? Omitted variable bias? Bah, that’s for first-year grad students. What I find really...
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The negligible returns to cash
In Australia the best term deposit rate I can find is 5.5%. This is a lot higher than you would be getting on US dollars (~0%) or the Euro (~2%) at the moment. With an inflation rate of 2.5% that looks...
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A better way of feeding the world than torturing chickens
John Quiggin suggests that we could feed everyone a high-meat diet and reduce climate change to boot by shifting from livestock to chickens: I’ve previously argued that we can feed the world if we make...
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A colossal counterfactual screw up
A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of choosing the right counterfactual in policy analysis. I noted that quite often people choose ‘no change’ as their comparison for whatever they are...
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Trading on prediction markets
Last week I placed my first bets on the prediction market InTrade – the largest and most notable prediction market in the world. They were on behalf of a friend but I will soon start trading with my...
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Down with housework
A few months ago I wrote about how cleanliness was often an unhelpful addiction: I am skeptical of cleaning, beyond that required to stay organised and avoid disease, for the same reason most people...
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What is to be done about animals?
Humans have successfully developed laws and social institutions that allow us to gradually improve our welfare over time. These include wealth redistribution among families, close friends and countries...
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Do innovation programs actually increase innovation?
I wrote this a few years ago privately, and now that I am no longer employed by the Australian Government, can post it up here. I’m doing so both because it’s interesting in itself, and because I may...
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