That the American healthcare system is dysfunctional is not hard to show. It is also very complex (not an insignificant factor in its high cost) but has most Americans fairly happy with their healthcare while a relatively small minority are quite badly off. As with US health policy, labour market regulation also typically favours a large majority ( ( Read more... )

It is a characteristic of modern democratic states that they are over-supplied with law and under-supplied with courts. Medieval England would have had a least one judicial officer per village: so maybe one judicial officer per 300 or so people. There were expenses and dangers involved in "going to court" but the use of courts, at least at a ( Read more... )

It is an established fact of economic life that wages are “sticky” downwards. That is, that sacking people is typically resorted to more than cutting wages to existing employees. There is no doubt a vast economic literature on this, one that I have not read. Nevertheless, as part-owner of a business that pays some people are regular weekly ( Read more... )

The Marxian theory of value says value is created by socially necessary abstract labour time. Any particular worker working on any particularly thing may, in fact, not successfully create value. But, if something has value, that value is equal to the socially necessary abstract labour time embodied in that thing ( Read more... )

Today was Padua Catholic College at Rosebud. A session of Tournament for all four classes, followed by four (short) sessions of Weapons & Armour (two crappy classes, two good classes, though having all the new props was great). One lad actually gave me a hard time in Tournament, which very rarely happens. (That my shield strap came undone while ( Read more... )

I have been commissioned to review Tom Bramble's Trade Unionism in Australia: A History from Flood to Ebb Tide. I have drafted a review and sent it around for comment. One of my interlocuters made the following apposite comment:

The Brambles of the world irritate me beyond belief because they ultimately don't care about people, in particular the ( Read more... )

UK study finds that having and raising children is the main reason for male-female pay disparity.

Best letter from a (former) hedge fund manager ever.

Back in July 2007, historian Niall Ferguson gave a strikingly prescient lecture. Thoughtful analysis of how the credit crisis arose.

How the British response was better than the American to the ( Read more... )

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics is now online.

Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation. The CEE entry on hyperinflation.

Classic paper on economic activity, including the use of cigarettes as currency, in PoW camps: It is thus to be seen that a market came into existence without labor or production. The B.R.C.S. may be considered as "Nature" of the ( Read more... )

Found another cute thing about my iPhone. I used Skype(tm) for the first time since I got my iPhone and found that all the contacts I had loaded on my system were automatically loaded into Skype, which is pretty cool ( Read more... )

Constructing estimates of world GDP over the last million years.

The occurrence of economic “singularities” and predicting another one around the middle of this century. The author’s suggested next singularity I find deeply implausible in both type and alleged effects; it is far more likely to come from another breakthrough in the manipulation of ( Read more... )