Friday, July 03, 2015

The numbers don't tell the whole economic story




NSW wants financial services taxes made competitive with AsiaThe NSW government is targeting the export of financial services as a key driver of future budget surpluses and wants Canberra benchmark tax settings with other financial centres in the region to ensure Sydney is able to compete and grow jobs.



Victoria Thieberger   As policymakers and economists try to gauge the pace of rebalancing in the economy, they are hamstrung by a lack of surveys and data that track services, which account for 70 per cent of economic activity.



Growth in the Australian economy is concentrated in a small number of inner-city and resource-rich locations, while 35% of locations are effectively in recession, according to research from PwC released today.


Public Private Partnerships: Global trends
This report explores some of the more promising developments in both mature and developing PPP markets, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Asia and the United States. The review highlights a number of key international trends to be considered in the Australian context.



A hard slog ahead for households
Business Spectator, 19/6/15. Australian wage growth has fallen to its lowest level since at least the early 1990s recession. Increased spare capacity, a lower terms of trade and an unsustainably high real exchange rate help explain why this has occurred.
Nevertheless, the fall in wage growth has been larger than simple historical relationships suggest, and it could have important implications for Australia’s next recession.



Qing Dynasty measured some 14.7 million square kilometers in 1790…The two biggest countries in western Europe were under 0.7 million in the late eighteenth century.
That is from Philip T. Hoffman’s new and interesting Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, here is the book’s home page.  Hoffman does note, however, that if we count empires the Spanish empire was during that time larger than China.


 Humour in courts
 Kagan on spider man patent case

And from recent House hearing on the subject: “OPM chief ducks blame for data breach, pins it on ‘whole of government'” [Washington Examiner]