Peabody’s bid for Macarthur Coal is hardly a carbon tax endorsement

An article that a wrote for "The Conversation".

Comments welcome

What happens to the market equilbrium when.......

Linked is an interesting situation to which the microeconomic principles of demand and supply curves may be used.

I always knew that economists were more knowledgeable than mathematicians and scientists....

 http://economics.com.au/?p=6674

A definition of competition

I was reading an article whilst traveling home on the train last night.  The following definition of competition was noted "a procedure for discovering facts which, if the procedure did not exist, would remain unknown or at least would not be used."  Hayek, F.A. 1968/2002 Competition as a discovery procedure (Marcellus S. Snow Trans.) Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 5, 9-23.


Therefore, based on this definition, one may assert that were competition is stifled, facts are mysteries waiting to be discovered but forever hidden.

What is economics?

A question that is often asked is, "what is economics?"  Many answers to this question have been presented.  For example:
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/economics/economics-science-or-art/

A recent installment that I found thought provoking was: economics is a science, an art, a competition and politics.  (note you may need a NBER subscription to access this article)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16416 - by Harald Uhlig

Rudd and "National Competitiveness"

Prime Mininster Rudd's recent essay contains a number of references to global competitiveness.

.... Australia cannot meet the challenges of raising our global competitiveness if we do not lift productivity growth.

The Prime Minister needs to have a read 0f Paul Krugman's classic 1974 article in Foreign Affairs.

competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies. And the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous.

Absolute levels of productivity, rather than levels of productivity relative to our trading partners, are what matters for living standards. The Prime Minister appears to limit his attention to productivity growth in tradeables, but there is no reason to ignore productivity growth in non-tradeables.

Davidson and Kates Make Page 2 of the Oz

My colleagues Professor Sinclair Davidson and Dr Steven Kates are mentioned on page 2 of today's The Australian.

Rudd fails economic history lesson, Christian Kerr, July 28, 2009 ....PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has got his economic history in his latest exercise in essaying "exactly wrong". That's the view of RMIT University academic Sinclair Davidson, who says it doesn't augur well for our future......

Davidson wants to know how we can trust a bloke who has got the past wrong to lead us into the future.....

Davidson points to research by RMIT colleague Steven Kates which shows how unemployment in Australia after 1932 fell more swiftly than in the US and Britain. The essay shows how ignorant Kevin Rudd is of Australian economic history.....

All up, Davidson describes the background to Rudd's latest essay as extraordinary. "He's put us into debt to the tune of $300 billion having claimed to have learned lessons that he doesn't know."