The empirical basis of the Green Lantern theory

John Quiggin26 Comments

The idea that winning wars is a matter of willpower (what Matt Yglesias calls the Green Lantern theory of geopolitics) has been getting more and more attention as the situation in Iraq deteriorates.

At one level, the triumph of will theory is immune to meaningful empirical refutation. Whenever a nation loses a war, it can be argued that, with more willpower it would have prevailed. The one exception is where the nation is utterly destroyed, in which case, there will be no one interested in observing the failure of will.

There is, however, a specifically American version, which can be given some kind of empirical support. Until Vietnam, the United States had, at least according to the official accounts, never lost a war. The willpower theory holds that this loss was due to domestic weakness rather than defeat on the battlefield, and that subsequent failures of US forces in Lebanon, Somalia and elsewhere represent “Vietnam syndrome”.
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Bananas

John Quiggin33 Comments

I just ate my first banana since cyclone Larry. My intertemporal elasticity of substitution for bananas is too high (at least for time periods of a year) to justify buying them at $12/kg, but the sight of some lovely bananas at $8/kg was too much temptation for me.

This reminds of the story about Evelyn Waugh told (IIRC) by his son Auberon. Bananas had been unobtainable in England during the War, and Auberon and his two siblings had grown up hearing about this marvellous fruit. The first shipment after the War arrived and the government of the day (the only seriously socialist government in British history) decreed that every child in the country should have one. Waugh senior claimed his family’s allocation of three, cashed in the family ration of sugar and cream and ate the lot in front of his children.

Reviewing the Stern Review, again

John Quiggin28 Comments

Following the publication of this piece in the NY Times, I’ve had a string of email exchanges with Hal Varian, cc:ing Brad DeLong in the role of interested onlooker. I was surprised by the NY Times article since it included both a correct statement of the way in which Stern treats discounting and income redistribution (roughly speaking a 1 per cent change in income has the same value whenever it is incurred and whoever receives it) with a lot of statements that were either misleading or downright wrong, implying that the near-zero rate of pure time preference in the Stern Review implied a near-zero discount rate for cash flows.

Since Varian is one of the brightest and most technically careful people in the economics profession, I was unsurprised by the correct statement, but very surprised to see errors I’d already refuted when put forward by Arnold Kling, Bjorn Lomborg, Megan McArdle and others. Email revealed that the main problems arose from editorial attempts to ‘simplify’ things for readers, but we still have a lot of disagreements about the justifiability or otherwise of inherent discounting.

In any case, all this has spurred me on to produce my long-promised review of Stern on discounting, at least in draft form. Read, enjoy and criticise.

Mulrunji, again

John Quiggin19 Comments

It appears that neither criminal charges nor any kind of misconduct proceedings will arise from the death of an innocent man, Mulrunji, from injuries received in custody at Palm Island. What’s even worse, is that the Director of Public Prosecutions chose, not merely to state that there was insufficient evidence to proceed to trial, but to make a positive finding of accidental death, contrary to the findings of the Coroner on the same evidence. The Courier-Mail reported the decision as “overturning the findings of a two-year coronial inquest”.

As far as I can tell, the DPP has no power to do anything of the kind. Certainly, I can’t recall anything like this announcement in the past. Maybe someone with more legal background can clarify this. But even if the DPP hasn’t exceeded her powers, the statement was ill-advised and inflammatory.

As Noel Pearson points out, this isn’t the first dubious decision made by Leanne Clare, and something of a pattern seems to be emerging. If you’re on the outer with the establishment (Pauline Hanson, Di Fingleton) dubious charges will be pursued to the limit. But if you’re on the inside, things are very different. The government and the Police Force have mishandled this case from day one, and it’s unsurprising the the victim’s family feel that they have been railroaded.

And I agree with Federal Minister Mal Brough. We need a public inquiry into the whole tragic business, including the government’s handling of it.

Weddings

John Quiggin23 Comments

An interesting piece by Tim Colebatch about new data on weddings showing that only 40 per cent of weddings are now religious ceremonies. This, rather than answers to Census questions, is probably a good representation of the level of religious belief in Australia. Apart from cases where the parties have strongly conflicting religious beliefs, and choose a civil ceremony as a compromise, it’s hard to imagine a serious religious believer not wanting a religious ceremony for marriage. On the other hand, I doubt that many convinced non-believers these days would go for a church rather than a civil ceremony, given the range of options on offer.

Another interesting feature of the article is the assumption (probably accurate) that this trend is entirely driven by brides – the word “groom” doesn’t even appear.