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BMW had the Most Cars at DM2017!

By Admin - October 16, 2017

Did you wonder how many cars in your favorite marque made the show? Here's the 2017 breakdown.

Corruption fighter joins contest for South Brisbane

By Admin - October 08, 2017

Corruption fighter and Game of Mates author Dr Cameron Murray has thrown his hat into the ring to challenge Deputy Premier Jackie Trad for the hotly contested South Brisbane seat at the upcoming Queensland election. University of Queensland economics lecturer and corruption fighter Dr Cameron Murray will be contesting the seat of South Brisbane as an Independent candidate. After the release of his book earlier this year on political favouritism in Australia, entitled Game of Mates: How favours bleed the nation , Dr Murray decided it was time to take the next step and try and enter politics to clean it up. “People are sick of professional politicians working in the interests of their mates rather than the hard-working public,” said Dr Murray. “Across the state, people have been telling me they want a fresh approach, free of corruption and big-party backroom deals, and that needs real people with experience from outside of politics to put their hand up and offer a sensible alternative.”

A Bitcoin Bet

By Admin - September 23, 2017

I have yet to hear reasoned arguments about why Bitcoin should be considered a currency. Nor have the perceived advantages over existing currencies and their settlement systems ever really been properly elucidated. Somehow that does not stop people believing that Bitcoin is a currency. In many cases, people argue that it is even better than existing national currencies without even knowing about the security and settlement features of the current payment systems used across the world. Perhaps this is why the benefits of crypto-currencies are never made clear, and all you get is hand-waving about governments debasing their currency, being anonymous, or some such thing. Bitcoin is a financial roulette wheel, spinning on ideology, and attracting suckers with every turn. It has none of the core features of a currency, which means it will never be used as one. Professor Jason Potts, a founder of Crypto Economics , seems for some reason to think otherwise. On Facebook, I suggested to a mutua

Finding Australia's "missing million"

By Admin - September 04, 2017

I am responding here to Aidan Morrison's brilliant deep dive into the ABS population statistics entitled "The Missing Million: Is Australia's migration rate actually high?". 1. The ABS always strings together their data after series breaks. It is really bad in the economic data where the whole concept of what they are trying to measure can change (like the 1998 CPI revision). You could do a similar deep dive into every ABS dataset and finish with more questions than answers.   2. Many people who use the data (including most of those people in your example) know there is a series break in 2006. But as you have shown, it doesn’t really make much of a difference in the end. The divergence with the raw arrivals/departures data that started in the early 2000s remains. The new 12/16 rule applies symmetrically to those who leave and arrive, and although the ABS notes that it increases the NOM estimate during their 2003-06 test period, this was kind of the point. They were c

A random physicist takes on economics

By Admin - August 27, 2017

Jason Smith, a random physicist, has a new book out where he takes aim at some of the core foundations of microeconomics. I encourage every economist out there to open their mind, read it, and genuinely consider the implications of this new approach. Go get it now . It only costs a few bucks. So what do I think? His approach is exactly what economics needs - a set of fresh eyes on the basics.[1] The book is, fundamentally, an introduction to Smith's new view of what I would call ‘microeconomics as the emergent characteristic of random agents in constrained situations’. Or, more simply put, why you don’t need rational decision-makers for a useful economic theory that makes good predictions. To get some sense of why this is important, economists are often criticised for getting the big picture stuff of macroeconomics wrong, like missing the financial crisis. But in reality, the economic micro-level stuff, about responding to relative prices, making choices based on incomes and prefer

Economic bandits

By Admin - August 02, 2017

Get the book via gameofmates.com A string of successful Game of Mates speaking events has happened recently -- in Kuranda, Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne. I can't take all the credit. But, James, our bandit in the Game of Mates, can. He has been extremely active all across the land and people are starting to notice. One issue that has repeatedly come up at these events is the rise of 'strategic representation' of the economic benefits of major projects in planning applications. For example, a land subdivision proposal might include plans for a new university campus, eco-tourism facilities, and more, in order to be able to claim the project will generate billions of dollars of economic benefits to the region. But the reality is often that these additional facilities are completely infeasible and will never happen. They are just included in the application to beef up the claimed merits of the project, for there is no obligation from the approval to follow through with the

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