Immigration and the economy
Putting together the information from these articles from the Christain Science Monitor and the Washington Post, (found via Greg Mankiw’s blog) once more emphasis the enormous economic benefits of immigration. It also demolishes the arguments of those “concerned” about immigration, in Britain as well as the US. (more…)
Don’t blame the city for job cuts
It is common to hear the City being blamed for pushing companies into cost cutting strategies. I never really believed this, and now comes some solid evidence that Wall Street does not like job cuts. The City is not likely to be different.
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Technology confuses everyone
A blog post by a leading IT security expert explains why the market for security products fails because buyers are unable to evaluate products. This is a more striking example than those I presented earlier because it concerns sophisticated professional buyers like banks and intelligence services. (more…)
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How to exploit monopolies and distort markets
Here are a few ways in which a company can exploit a strong market position to extend an existing monopoly, eliminate any remaining competition, and extract the greatest revenues at the lowest cost. (more…)
Income inequality and incentives
An article by Robert H Frank on trickle down economics in the NY Times points out that there is little correlation between high earners pay and how hard they work. This is backing for my views on directors pay. (more…)
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How the economy should work
Fabian Tassano has responded to my post on the problems of the emergence of monopolies and oligopolies in more and more markets. He appears to think it is less damaging than I do, and he also wants to know what I think the best alternatives are. (more…)
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Private monopoly vs public monopoly
The most sane (albeit not against a very high standard) of a number libertarian (or, at any rate, very pro-market) bloggers in Britain that I read, admits that network effects mean that many markets tend to “collapse” into monopolies. I would add that many more markets tend to become oligopolies or cartels. In the face of this, why does he still believe that leaving everything to the markets is the best way to run an economy? (more…)
Low taxes do not attract investment
It appears that cutting corporate taxes does not make a country more attractive to investors. I do not find this surprising. The long term benefits of the right government expenditure (on education, infrastructure and health, for example) are obvious. So why are governments so keen on tax cuts? (more…)
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Technology subverts more markets
It looks like it is not just consumers who are unable to make informed rational decisions when faced with technology. It appears that Indian cotton farmers have a similar problem when faced with choosing GM seed varieties. In this case as they would clearly wish to choose according to rational criteria, but they cannot.
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Innumerate Polly
Anyone even vague numerate reading this article by Polly Toynbee would would have probably spotted where it went wrong. It is very hard to read it without thinking “surely that £5bn must be a reccuring annual amount whereas as she is comparing it to one off amounts”. David Smith confirms that this is the case. (more…)
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