Posts tagged…Evidence
The truth about employment trends
Fri, Mar 13 2009There's a level of hysteria to the reporting of the February employment data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Better to look yourself at the ABS report (it's quite readable) where it is clear that, although unemployment is trending up after a long decline, there is no need for alarm about current levels. Australia still enjoys historically low levels of unemployment, while employment…
Read more…Evidence-free stimulus
Sun, Mar 01 2009It was two years late to end the economic downturn, but the US Highway bill of 1956 brought worse in its wake:
"The bill, for all its expense, seemed a no-brainer, and legislators cast their votes without even a hint of a sense that they might not know what they were doing, or that sums of money big enough to do your country much good are also big enough to do it much harm."Extract from the Effect of a market ‘fix’... Mon, Feb 23 2009
Contrary to the spin, emissions-trading discourages conservation:"But the fact is once emissions trading comes in, every tonne of emissions saved by households simply frees up an extra permit that will allow big polluters to increase their emissions. This is because emissions trading relies on a fixed number of pollution permits being in circulation at any point in time. While most people…Case for due diligence in public policy
Sun, Feb 22 2009
This is a great, if horrifying, read. Bruce McCulloch and Ross McKitrick have compiled a case-book of unsupported claims in science and public-policy research that complements Gary Banks' recommendations on evidence-based public policy.
"Empirical research in academic journals is often cited as the basis for public policy decisions, in part because people think that the journals have checked the…Naive forecasts outperform IPCC
Tue, Feb 17 2009
In a straightforward but important paper, Green, Armstrong and Soon demonstrate that there is no reason to develop elaborate 'forecasts' of temperature. The forecasts of the CGM models, they predict, will be no better over policy-relevant periods of 20, 50 or even 100 years than a naive forecast that assumes future temperatures will be the same as today's.
"Global mean temperatures were found…Obama’s science advisor hates science
Tue, Feb 17 2009
Second update: I have to revise my assessment—made after reviewing his publication history—that Dr John Holdren is 'something of a crackpot' (now over the fold).
This transcript shows that Holdren is a publicist for fashionable apocalypses with little sense of proportion or respect for evidence that might get in the way of his hyperbole. He could reasonably ask, of course, to be excused for…
Evidence that shorting ban “a mistake”
Wed, Feb 11 2009
Reactive policies adopted because the regulators have a ‘hunch’ they’re right are frequently wrong. So, it now seems, with the ban that ASIC imposed on short-selling stocks—a common and prudent risk hedge—because, they said, it would lead to “unwarranted price fluctuations” in financial stocks.
Whatever that means: the regulator never explained to us what was ‘unwarranted’ about falls in the…
Costs and benefits of trade
Tue, Feb 10 2009
It's a shame that even the Financial Times has joined the chorus of alarm about the recent plunge in trade volumes.
"[The IMF] expects (Asian) regional growth of just 2.7 per cent, a fraction of the 9 per cent achieved in 2007 and a percentage point lower even than it managed during its own financial crisis a decade ago. That crisis was largely self-inflicted, the product of an overdependence on…The fiscal stimulus as ‘experiment’
Mon, Feb 09 2009
A few days ago, I suggested Gary Banks' perceptive reminder that "all policy is experiment" should guide plans for the proposed fiscal stimulus in Australia. The prudent rule is: take moderate steps, test the evidence of results, adjust direction, and move again. Given the relative strengths of the Australian economy we have the time (and the data) to do that.
Now economist Henry Ergas, writing…
The fresh fruit mafia
Sun, Feb 08 2009
Now that people smoke less, VicHealth—a statutory authority set up by the Victorian Parliament in the late 1980s to reduce the use of tobacco—has to find other ways to suck up our taxes. Over the years they have apparently become convinced that they are guardians of what's good for us and they're willing to go to dramatic lengths to ensure we conform to their views about... fresh fruit…
Gary Banks on evidence-based policy
Thu, Feb 05 2009
About two-thirds the way through his paper on how to make ‘evidence-based policy’, given as an address a couple of days ago to the Australia/New Zealand School of Government, Gary Banks, the Chair of the Productivity Commission quotes a sardonic aphorism of Keynes:
“There is nothing a Government hates more than to be well-informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more…
Should you be worried about salt?
Thu, Feb 05 2009
This post is may seem a little 'off-topic'. But please bear with me a moment. It's about 'evidence-based' public policy.
I find that working on international trade and trade policies places a premium on good evidence as the basis of good public policy. There is a lot of b.s. in the political economy of trade (no surprise). The very first thing to do is to look at the evidence—"who gains and who…
![Mean and maximum errors in a naive forecast of temperature 1850-2008 [Green et. al.]](http://www.inquit.com/images/uploads/NaiveForecast.gif)
