A truism in politics has been codified in what’s been called Miles’s Law: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” In other words, principles can depend a bit on one’s interests. Legend had it that one of the professors who taught courses in antitrust where I went to graduate school liked to quip: “I support antitrust because antitrust supports me.” Consulting in antitrust cases was rather lucrative. Read more

If we could fixing the tangled mess of regulation stymieing new home construction, it would help alleviate real misery. The housing shortage leads directly to rents that take up too much of our paycheques, to overcrowding, and potentially to poor health. Read more

There was a line of ’80s and ’90s motivational posters, often involving pictures of cats, with quips that might help improve spirits around the workplace. One of those, from memory, read something like, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!” Other variants read, “You don’t have to be crazy to work here; we will train you.” None of them would pass modern sensitivity standards, and they were never really motivational or funny in the first place. Read more

Maybe things would be different if somebody had 'invented' prices. We tend not to understand and appreciate institutions, like prices, that emerge spontaneously through human interaction rather than are the product of human design. Read more

Parables, biblical or otherwise, are excellent instruction. They warn of the dangers of getting what you wish for. Read more

Joel Hernandez and I have been lucky to be spending the past few days at the 60th Annual Conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists. The meetings are always a great way of keeping abreast of what other economists around the traps are working on. Read more

Cabinet shuffles provide great journalistic set-pieces. For the politics-as-sport contingent, it provides all the narrative arc of changes to the Black Caps line-up for the World Cup: winners and losers, who’s in and who’s out, and whether the changes will do more to help the team score political runs or to defend against the Opposition’s bowling attack. Read more

Not too long ago, Canada’s Northwest Passage was effectively unnavigable. The ice was simply too thick for sailing ships to make it through during the too-short summers. Read more

Politicians have a lot of privileges, but one privilege that regular folks have over them is the freedom to change our minds. In an interview with Meet the Press in 1970, economist Paul Samuelson explained his changing views on inflation to a journalist by saying, “Well when events change, I change my mind. Read more

We all know that best policy is not paying off the kidnappers. Countries that get in the habit of paying the kidnappers encourage the taking of more of their nationals as hostages. Read more

Economists, or at least economists of a policy-bent, like to distinguish between outputs and outcomes. Focusing on the former comes too easily at the expense of the latter, especially in the case of KiwiBuild and the Government’s overall housing supply agenda. Read more