Tuesday, went to a CERC seminar given by an IR academic from Scotland.

The presentation was informative (though more so than the presenter intended). ( revealing in lots of ways )

One of the more historically illiterate notions that many academics and commentators are fond of is the race to the bottom. The notion that if you have competitive jurisdictions, governments will be driven to have weaker and weaker standards in a "race to the bottom ( Read more... )

If one looks at comparative international statistics, the continuing success of the Nordic model-despite a rough patch in early to mid 90s-is quite clear. So, a natural question is: can Oz learn from them? (Of course, Oz also does well in comparative international statistics.)

May 2, went to a well-attended CERC seminar by Andrew Scott (author ( Read more... )

I wonder how many officials are employed to replicate what could be done much more efficiently (including more cheaply) and effectively by price mechanisms. I wonder how many are employed as a result of the employment of other officials to suppress price mechanisms.

There is something to class analysis, if only because folk in similar situations ( Read more... )

The news that Quadrant editor Paddy McGuinness had been granted oversight over ARC grants upset some people. (Via taavi.)

It does seem a regrettably ad hoc way of proceeding. What I find remarkable is that so un-ideological a Coalition minister as Brendan Nelson has taken such a step. It bespeaks a deep alienation of the Coalition from mainstream ( Read more... )

A few years ago, I went to a fairly poor Academy of Social Sciences conference in Canberra on indigenous issues (there was much denunciation of "conservatives": naturally, none such were invited to speak for themselves). As a result, I am on the mailing list for its publication, DialogueAs a publication written by social science academics for ( Read more... )

Read Katharine Betts’ article People and Parliamentarians: The Great Divide in the latest People and Place about attitude differences between candidates and voters. This is the piece which found that Coalition candidates are quite close to their voters while Labor candidates are quite distant from theirs (p.73). And that, overall many people who ( Read more... )