Saturday, May 31, 2014

Quick links: Crony politics, utility, Becker, exports

The Greens proposed in parliament to implement a Federal Independent Commission Against Corruption with similar powers to the NSW Commission. Labor and Liberal refused to vote, in the process revealing their entrenched reliance on cronyism for their existence.

Former Queensland Electoral Commissioner Bob Longland on 7.30 discussing his idea for federal authority in charge of publishing political donations to all parties at all levels of government (and I guess enforcing disclosure requirements as well).

Great idea. But it seems the Queensland government is taking the opposite approach and reducing disclosure requirements.

Some brilliant detailed criticism of the leap of faith hidden between utility and welfare maximisation at Interfluidity

And a follow up post here

Forget the SMD theorem. In 1986 Gary Becker showed that market demand curves will slope downwards even under irrational choices where a budget constraint exists.

Given my previous post mentioning export-led growth via high levels of investment, here’s a chart of the export share and investment share of GDP (all countries and all time periods from the World Bank database)


3 comments:

  1. the link to a follow up post to Interfluidity's welfare economics post links to Apple.

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  2. "Forget the SMD theorem. In 1986 Gary Becker showed that market demand curves will slope downwards even under irrational choices where a budget constraint exists."

    My reading of Becker is that if we live in a perfectly competitive world where there is a clear 'optimal' choice and any deviation from this will result in 'punishment', people will converge toward the optimal choice.

    That's sweet. Although it doesn't tell us anything about decisions in the real world.

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    Replies
    1. I put that in there just for you ;-)

      I'm not a Becker fan, but I've been told by a co-author to understand this paper, so I trust there is something in there. I've yet to examine the nitty-gritty details and find the hidden assumption that holds the model together. But I will soon.

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