Economics Explored

Here’s a link to Dr Dan Mitchell’s International Liberty blog. Use these timestamps to jump right to the highlights:1:40 – Gene mentions the Optimal size of government in Australia paper co-authored by Griffith University Professor Tony Makin and Economic Society of Australia (QLD) President Julian Pearce3:00 – Dan notes empirical literature suggests optimal size of government around 20% of GDP10:20 – discussion of OECD research on government spending and growth (see this OECD working paper and Dan’s blog plot)17:10 – Dan notes the 1930s and 1960s were the two periods where the size of government really stepped up20:05 – how a value-added tax (VAT) promotes growth of government30:55 – discussion of Adam Smith’s dictum “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and tolerable administration of justice…” (see this Online Library of Liberty post)32:45 – using foreign judges to import the rule of law 

There are currently around 7.7 billion people in the world. The UN is projecting global population will increase to 9.7 billion by 2050 and to nearly 11 billion by 2100. Obviously, this projected growth raises a range of economic, social, and environmental challenges. In this episode, Economics Explained host Gene Tunny discusses global population growth with his good friend Tim Hughes from Urban Ergo.The UN’s World Population Prospects 2019 projections get mentioned a lot in this episode.Use these timestamps to jump right to the highlights:0:14 – intro to global population trends – e.g. declining global population growth with growth concentrated in developing economies, a projected decline in population in the most developed economies over the century, and India to overtake China as the most populous country this decade5:18 – declining fertility rates in richer countries10:18 – Reverend Malthus’s dire prediction11:58 – why global population growth is declining and global population may eventually peak and start falling by 210015:53 – huge projected population growth in sub-Saharan Africa – e.g. in Nigeria20:30 – why is a fertility rate greater than 2 necessary to replace the population? And more on declining fertility rates – e.g. birth control pill, increasing opportunity cost of having children28:35 – sources of Australia’s population growth (NB more recent ABS demographic data than what Gene recalled off the top of his head suggest three-fifths of the growth is due to immigration, and two-fifths is due to natural increase (births minus deaths)This episode was recorded on Thursday 19 December 2019 at the Adept Economics office in the Johnson Hotel, Spring Hill Brisbane.

Use these timestamps to jump right into the episode:2:15 – Larry Summers’s secular stagnation hypothesis (see his Peterson Institute talk);4:10 – discussion of Tyler Cowen’s and Robert Gordon’s views (see Cowen’s lecture on Inequality, productivity stagnation and Moore’s Law and check out Robert Gordon’s book The Rise and Fall of American Growth);5:45 – On Stiglitz’s attack on Summers and secular stagnation (see Stiglitz’s article The myth of secular stagnation);7:30 – reference to “Dr Doom” Nouriel Roubini’s “perfect storm in 2020” interview from 2018;9:00 – discussion of Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh’s new book Innovation + Equality; 11:10 – reference to the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism;13:30 – Financial Times editorial on GDPR;14:08 – Verge article on new California data privacy law; and15:27 – IMF blog post on climate change. 

Use these timestamps to jump right to the highlights:3:55 – Quiggin on the relevance of the two lessons in economics for responding to climate change; 8:55 – Craig Lawrence on cost-benefit analysis;12:20 – Di Johnson on personal finance, particularly buying a house or unit;15:05 – Brendan Markey-Towler on behavioural economics;17:50 – Nicholas Gruen on digital public goods illustrated with 23andMe example; 21:45 – Andreas Chai on Randomized Controlled Trials in poverty alleviation;25:23 – Rebecca Archer on the media in this age of digital disruption; 26:54 – Darren Brady Nelson on the gig economy; 28:44 – Pascalis Raimondos on multinational tax avoidance; and31:02 – Leonora Risse on the gender pay gap. 

This episode’s guest Associate Professor Andreas Chai is Discipline Head of Economics and Business Statistics in the Griffith University Business School. He has previously worked at the Australian Productivity Commission and the Australia Treasury. Andreas is well-placed to speak about economic development, as he has consulted to international organisations such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation on economic development issues.Use these timestamps to jump right into Gene and Andreas’s conversation:1:40 – is the Nobel Prize in Economics a real Nobel Prize? (NB at the current exchange rate, the 9 million Swedish Krona prize is work around 960,000 USD, which is shared equally among the winners)5:40 – why did Esther Duflo, Abhijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer win the 2019 Nobel Prize?9:00 – Limitations of traditional approach to economic development, with Andreas mentioning Jeffrey Sachs and Bono and critics such as William Easterly 16:00 – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab17:50 – what is a randomised controlled trial? How one helped find the cure for scurvy. 22:40 – RCTs in poverty alleviation31:25 – Dr Andrew Leigh MP as proponent of RCTs in policy analysis and development in Australia (e.g. see Andrew’s 2018 interview on RN Breakfast)31:50 – ethical issues with RCTs?33:20 – future Nobel Prize winners? Neuroeconomics as an emerging field36:35 – Andreas’s own work on economic development issues; e.g. this UNIDO report on Household Consumption Patterns and the Sectoral Composition of Growing Economies

This episode’s guest Dr Leonora Risse is currently a fellow in the Women and Public Policy program at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to taking up her Kennedy School fellowship this year, Leonora was a Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. As we discuss toward the end of the episode, Leonora has been a very active board member of the Australian Women in Economics Network, which is affiliated with the Economic Society of Australia. Leonora is well qualified to talk about the gender pay gap, having co-authored an article on the gender pay gap which was published in Oxford Economic Papers in 2018.Use these timestamps to jump right into Gene and Leonora’s conversation:1:53 – size of the gender pay gap4:41 – gender pay gap partly due to women and men being concentrated in different industries, but partly to do with women not progressing up the career ladder as quickly as men do8:47 – how some policy settings (e.g. means-testing of child care benefits) can create high effective marginal tax rates for women and discourage them from returning to the workforce or working more hours12:26 – men get rewarded for being confident and ambitious, but women don’t – what does this mean regarding all those self-help books by Sheryl Sandberg, Marie Forleo, etc.?17:57 – women won’t go for a new job unless they feel they meet 100% of the criteria while men will if they think they meet 60% 26:58 – impact of big 5 personality traits (e.g. agreeableness, conscientiousness, etc.) on gender pay gap41:07 – barriers to women moving into male-dominated industries (e.g. mining, economics & finance)43:07 – Gene asks Leonora whether gender pay gap will naturally close over time due to higher tertiary enrolments among women than men and Leonora responds “…even though a higher share of women compared to men to achieve these educational qualifications, they still tend to be concentrated in fields of study that are associated with lower pay.”48:42 – what the Australian Women in Economics Network (WEN) has been up to, and why we should try to avoid “manels”, all male panels of speakersLeonora has kindly provided the following supplementary information on her gender pay gap research to help listeners understand her findings:Supplementary analysis of gender pay gapEarlier this year, Leonora recorded a podcast interview on the gender pay gap for the Economic Society of Australia (Victoria):Does confidence advance women’s careers?Also, you may be interested in Leonora’s Mandarin article:Rewarding competence not confidence offers a step toward equalityAnd if you’re interested in what the Australian Women in Economics Network has been doing to promote a career in economics to women, check out this video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtOU-DAVch0

This episode’s guest is Professor Pascalis Raimondos, head of the School of Economics and Finance at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and an expert on international taxation and trade issues.Use these timestamps to jump right into Gene and Pascalis’s conversation:1:45 – are tax avoidance and tax evasion a major concern?3:40 – thin capitalisation as a way multinationals can minimise tax5:00 – transfer pricing as another way10:25 - having a lot of intangible capital (e.g. Apple, Starbucks) can assist in tax minimisation14:20 - need for international cooperation e.g. formula(ry) apportionment21:35 – Panama papers, shell companies, The Laundromat on Netflix 27:40 – following Piketty, do we need inheritance/wealth taxes?31:25 – economic benefits of Trump corporate tax cut in US34:40 – Pascalis recommends a cash flow tax, which Gene notes was suggested by the tax review led by Australian Treasury Secretary Ken Henry (see the 2010 Final Report)Gene and Pascalis’s conversation was recorded on 28 November 2019 in Pascalis’s office at QUT, Gardens Point Campus, Brisbane, using a Zoom H4n Pro digital recorder and Shure SM58 microphones. 

This episode’s guest is Rebecca Archer, Director of Connect Media Training. Australian listeners may know Rebecca as Rebecca Hyam, former ABC finance reporter. Rebecca still works on a casual basis at ABC Brisbane in addition to running her media training company. Of course, views expressed in this podcast are Rebecca’s personal views, and should not necessarily be attributed to the ABC. As well as working for Australia’s national broadcaster, Rebecca has worked for the original public broadcaster, the BBC. Use these timestamps to jump right into Gene and Rebecca’s conversation:2:15 – how the media industry has changed over the last 20 years4:45 – entry of NYT and the Guardian into the Australian market, as well as the rise of citizen journalists and bloggers6:20 – while only twenty years ago Rebecca was lugging around a Marantz tape recorder, she can now use an iPhone to record interviews9:50 – how the internet and social media have undermined the traditional business models of media organisations, and how Twitter is where breaking news now occurs (e.g. important updates from emergency services)12:25 – Nine-Fairfax merger as response to how difficult it is to make money in traditional media these days, followed by observation people are able to bypass traditional media and get news directly from sources via Twitter or Facebook15:05 – Gene refers to Centre for Media Transition report for the ACCC which discusses news as a public good20:00 – how newspapers have lost the “rivers of gold” which were classifieds advertising revenues, and how some media organisations have taken strong ideological positions to attract an audience23:00 – how media organisations can thrive: create content people can relate to, don’t be highbrow, and use social media to add value (e.g. Facebook Live discussion regarding a 60 Minutes story)29:00 – whether quality journalism has been compromised by digital disruption32:10 – polarisation and filter bubbles38:20 – whether journalism remains a good career41.30 – journalists as story tellers (Gene mentions Cal Fussman’s outstanding podcast Big Questions)45:10 – the role of public broadcasters such as the ABC and BBC in this age of digital disruptionGene and Rebecca’s conversation was recorded on 26 November 2019 in the Adept Economics office at the Johnson, Spring Hill, Brisbane, using a Zoom H4n Pro digital recorder and Shure SM58 microphones. 

This episode features Professor John Quiggin, author of Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work so Well, and Why they Can Fail So Badly. The book was published earlier this year by Princeton University Press. Economics Explained host Gene Tunny has reviewed the book on his blog (see Quiggin's Economics in Two Lessons should be on ECON101 reading lists for decades to come) and he was very happy to speak with Professor Quiggin about his book on the podcast. In addition to his own review, Gene recommends listeners check out Nicholas Gruen's remarks at the Melbourne book launch of Quiggin's book:There's no such thing as a free launch: Launching John Quiggin's Economics in Two LessonsProfessor Quiggin is the Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Fellow in Economics at the University of Queensland and is the author of, among other books, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. 

This episode’s guest is Chris Poole, a Senior Consultant at Frontline Health Recruitment, an Australian recruitment agency specialising in the health sector. Frontline Health Recruitment is on the same floor as Economics Explained host Gene Tunny’s business Adept Economics in the Johnson Hotel in Spring Hill, Brisbane. Highlights of this episode include:excellent tips from Chris on how job seekers can maximise their chances of getting a job (from 5:05);the importance of LinkedIn in the contemporary jobs market (from 17:10); why humans are still needed in the recruitment process (from 23:27); andhow Facebook and Google are getting into the recruitment business (from 30:40). Gene and Chris’s conversation was recorded on 31 October 2019 in the Adept Economics office in Spring Hill, Brisbane, using a Zoom H4n Pro digital recorder and Shure SM58 microphones.