Monthly Archives: October 2004

Lock into Savings

This entry was posted in Listener, Retirement & Savings, Social Policy on by .

The retirement debate depends on a disagreement between economists.

Listener : 23 October, 2004.

Keywords: Social Policy;

About 30 years ago economics sharpened its theory of behaviour with the assumption that everyone took economic decisions that gave them the best outcome. We might call this the “neoclassical paradigm”. It simplifies analysis enormously, and was used in policy extensively in the 1980s and 90s. In practice, the paradigm recognises that individuals don’t actually maximise, but it assumes that people are always taking actions that move them closer to the optimum, so the assumption of best outcomes is near enough to be true.

Globalisation and Economic Sovereignty

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade on by .

Paper to the Wayne University Law School, October 21, 2004. (Revised)

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

The Economist’s Meaning of Globalisation

Globalisation (or globalization) is much discussed today, although popular sentiment is, by the standards of scholarly discourse, opinionated, uniformed, and confused. The growing consensus among economic scholars may be summarised as follows:

Fa’a Samoa: Is the Future Of Samoa in New Zealand?

This entry was posted in Globalisation & Trade, Listener on by .

Listener: 9 October, 2004.

Keywords: Globalisation & Trade;

From “Sunset Beach” near the village of Falealupo, the most western part of the Samoan island of Savaii, one looks across the international dateline to tomorrow. Beyond it is New Zealand, where around 120,000 Samoans live – half of all our Pacific Islanders. Auckland is the largest Samoan city – should one say “congregation”? – in the world. Are we Samoa’s future?

The Gains from Reducing Waiting Times

This entry was posted in Health on by .

There is an accompanying letter A Strategy for Dealing with Excessive Waiting Times.

Keywords: Health;

This note has a simple purpose: to demonstrate the gains from reducing waiting times are somewhat larger than they might at first seem: an economic evaluation of the benefits reducing waiting times is likely to suggest there are very high returns. Essentially this arises because while a shortening of waiting times may appear superficially to benefit just a few people – the numbers in the backlog which are treated – all the subsequent patients are benefited by the shortening of the waiting times. Thus there is a spectacular multiplier from reducing waiting times which makes the gains for the outlay to reduce the backlog far larger than they at first seem.