I have a piece in the New York Times looking at the implications for the bitcoin bubble for economic theory and, in particular, for the (Strong) Efficient (Financial) Markets Hypothesis (EMH) which states that prices determined in financial markets reflect all the available information about the value of any asset. If that’s true then governments can’t improve on a policy of allocating investment to those assets with the highest market return, which can be achieved by letting private capital markets determine all investment decisions.

Bitcoins have no inherent usefulness, being a record of pointless calculations. They are useless as a currency (their putative purpose) and are now being promoted as a store of value on the basis of scarcity alone. This leaves supporters of the EMH with a dilemma.

If Bitcoins are indeed worthless, then financial markets should price them at zero. But the introduction of futures trading actually boosted the price in the short run. Even after recent declines, there’s no sign that prices will reach zero any time soon.

On the other hand, if Bitcoins are valuable simply because people value them, then asset prices are entirely arbitrary. The same argument can be applied to any financial asset.

Dean Baker at CEPR has a nice followup, making the obvious but crucial point that, since financial services are an intermediate input to production, we want the financial sector to be as small as possible, consistent with doing its essential tasks. As the experience of the mid-20th century shows, a market economy can function perfectly well with a financial sector much smaller than the one we have today. As Bitcoin shows, the massive expansion since then is nothing but wasteful speculation. The financial sector should be cut down to (a small fraction of its present) size.

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The Greens have announced a policy of renationalising the electricity grid, starting with transmission. Since that’s exactly what I proposed last year, it’s no surprise that I agree.

The crucial aspect of the policy is that it should begin with a reduction in the allowable rate of return to a level comparable with the long-term government bond rate. This ensures that the assets can be reacquired at their true value rather than paying the premium invariably associated with regulated rates of return based on spurious market comparators.

On a more snarky note, I can’t resist the observation that these assets were never fully privatised in the literal sense of the term. Rather, in many cases, they were sold to foreign governments operating through sovereign wealth funds.

I’ve appeared (or rather, been heard by teleconference) at two Senate inquiries this week, one on the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility and one on the problems of the TAFE system. In addition, i completed a submission to the inquiry into the Future of Work and Workers, which is now available on the inquiry website.

The Future of Work submission was about the way in which technology and labor market institutions have interacted to generate the “gig” economy of insecure employment, continuously threatened by technological disruption. The key point is that decades of anti-union and anti-worker legislation and state action have created a situation where technological change is likely to harm rather than help workers. A summary is over the fold
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My latest Guardian article is headlined https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/29/privatisation-is-deeply-unpopular-with-voters-heres-how-to-end-it. The core of the argument is that, to make a success of renationalisation, we need to do more than buy back privatised enterprises, and run them as publicly owned corporations. We need a different model. A starting point would be the statutory authority model used in Australia with great success, before the Hawke-Keating government adopted the corporatised model as a step towards privatisation.

I mentioned a while ago that I was making a submission to a Senate inquiry into Vocational Education and Training in South Australia. My submission has now been published on the Committee website with the title “The failure of vocational education and training policy in Australia”

I was a bit surprised to be told it was Submission Number 1, but it turns out they’ve only published two so far. The other one, from Dr Gavin Moodie makes most of the same points as mine.

As I mentioned the inquiry appears to have been called as a stunt to embarrass the SA Labor government, but it has provided an opportunity to bring the Senate’s attention to the continuing bipartisan failure of vocational education policy. To restate my key points, they were

* The impact of decades of cuts in public support for vocational training
* The disastrous effects of subsidising for-profit providers
* The goal of universal participation in post-school education and training
* Integration of technical/vocational and university education

David Blowers from the Grattan Institute has a piece in The Conversation (also on the ABC) headlined A high price for policy failure: the ten-year story of spiralling electricity bills. It’s not bad, and is notable for the observation that

History may judge the introduction of competition to the retail electricity market as an expensive mistake.

I don’t think we need to wait for history; in fact, we didn’t need to wait until 2017.

Most of the problems that have subsequently emerged were evident when I first addressed this issue in a paper in 2001., published in the Economic and Labor Relations Review

Here’s my conclusion

The National Electricity Market is still developing. Some problems that have emerged in the early stages such as the disparity between the substantial price reductions for large customers and the largely unchanged prices paid by households will fade away as the market matures. Other issues such as the structure of the industry and the degree of horizontal and vertical integration will be resolved by a mixture of market processes and regulatory interventions.

Some problems, however, are likely to become more rather than less acute. The Australian National Electricity Market commenced operation in a period of oversupply so that problems of market power and excessive prices have not emerged until recently. It remains unclear whether an electricity auction market can produce adequate incentives for investment while generating appropriate prices for consumers. Similar problems are emerging in relation to the regulated monopoly component of the industry, the transmission and distribution sector. Regulators must set prices that do not reward inefficiency or allow monopoly profits, but nevertheless provide appropriate incentives for new investment. This is a delicate balance.

In the longer term, the problem of the environmental impact of an industry relying predominantly on carbon-based fuels remains to be addressed. A market solution would involve the creation of emissions credits that could be traded along with electricity in national markets. Although limited steps have been taken in this direction, much remains to be done.

I’m working with Troy Henderson from the University of Sydney on a book chapter looking at union responses to the idea of a universal basic income (UBI),which have covered a range from supportive to strongly hostile, with the latter view predominant in Australia. Here’s a draft of my section of the chapter. Comments much appreciated.

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