Archive for January, 2009
Alberta royalties miss the point…
While there are a variety of other issues at play it seems that the Fair Share plan, since changed to the New Royalty Framework and most recently rebadged as the Alberta Royalty Framework, isn’t doing much to improve the prospects of the oil industry.
It’s like no-one pictured oil at less than $50/bbl when the Stelmach [...]
Children and early schooling effects
A couple of articles from the Berkley Electronic Press present some narrow but interesting things about child development.
Maria D. Fitzpatrick suggests:
For disadvantaged children residing in small towns and rural areas, Universal Pre-K availability increases both reading and mathematics test scores at fourth grade as well as the probability of students being on-grade for their age.
But [...]
Holiday medical myths
An article posted on the BMJ site clears up a few myths peripherally related to the holidays, including:
Sugar causes hyperactivity in children
Suicides increase over the holidays
Poinsettia toxicity
Excess heat loss in the hatless
The first I’ve known for a while, but it’s refreshing to have a few more tidbits available for debate when the need arises.
In a [...]
Children have innate numeracy
A excellent article from the Economist describes a variety of studies - but primarily one by Brian Butterworth - that show that the ability to count, or more simply, the ability to recognize the number differences in small collections of objects is built in. From Dr. Butterworth’s paper:
Here, using classical methods of developmental psychology, we [...]
All the financial crisis blather is making economics reading boring…
We need more challenging and entertaining stuff like these (mostly from the recent AEA conference):
Dwight R Lee’s article entitled Should Government Reduce Inequality in Life Spans? with such swell quotes as:
Government transfers to reduce the gender gap in life expectancy would do little more than reduce improvements in both women’s and men’s life expectancies. For [...]
AC/DC efficiency research presented at the AEA
After publishing his mock economics paper, then having the joke missed entirely during a (mini-)rant by Steven Levitt (who later apologized), Robert J. Oxoby of the University of Calgary has reached a new height with the presentation of his paper - entitled ON THE EFFICIENCY OF AC/DC: BON SCOTT VERSUS BRIAN JOHNSON - to the [...]
Global warming duds…
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy represented an article from the Melbourne Herald Sun entitled Top 10 Dud Global Warming Predictions.
While I would rank myself as a skeptic of global warming, especially of the histrionic man-bear-pig Al Gore variety, articles like this entertain me for reasons other than the debunking.
Global Warming, or Climate Change as [...]
Surprise! More competition serves consumers…
From a paper entitled How does access regulation affect broadband penetration?, the authors do a study trying to determine the type of regulation that provides for the highest acceptance of broadband internet access.
They compare three regulatory regime styles that in turn allow for:
single technology where resellers sell the same thing
single technology where resellers also can [...]
Madoff’s con won’t be fixed by regulations…
…only by improved personal responsibility.
To put things very simply, it wasn’t a lack of regulations that let Madoff run his scheme for as long as he did.
What allowed him to evade prosecution by current laws was merely a lack of due dilligence on the part of the investors in his “fund”. While most investments take [...]
Bush was a freemarket leader?
Since the market crash that followed the cratering of the property market in the US and elsewhere, many people have been shouting that this cratering proves that capitalism and markets don’t work. The contol-the-world types of both ends of the spectrum have trotted this one out, often for political expediency, but mostly because they seem [...]
Starting up again…
So I’ve actually been nagged by my loyal reader again and have decided to shake off the holiday blahs and get back into this effluent that I call “writing”.
Over the holidays betwixt events and Events and the like I worked my way throughsafer loads of TV and movies and had the chance to read through, [...]
