Harry Clarke

What’s happened to Australia’s international trade over the past 5 years? Most people know that Australia’s trade has grown strongly but I wonder how many understand the dramatic nature of the transformation that has occurred so very recently and despite the global financial crisis.   Colleague RW collated figures for the year ended 2005 and [...]

I guess that if you believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, was raised from the dead - and could both walk on the water and raise the dead - that it is not completely incomprehensible that you might not believe the science of climate change or the Darwinian theory of evolution.  The more extreme forms of Christianity can [...]

Jagdish Bhagwati argues in the Financial Times (subscription encouraged) that developed countries should be subject to a strict tort liability for damages done because of cumulative past greenhouse gas emissions. I disagree with most of his views but cite them (see below) given his pre-eminence as a trade theorist, development economist  and trade policy analyst.

One of the interesting and influential figures I met recently in Paris was Professor Donald Shoup  from the University of California, Los Angeles - I have a great shot of him iding a (rented) Velib bike near a well-known Parisian tourist attraction.  Shoup is one of the world’s experts on the economics of parking.  This sounds like a [...]

Another retrieved post after the nasty hacking attack.

It is the start of a new decade and the occasion to review a simple fact. The decade to 2010 was in terms of global mean surface temperatures the hottest in recorded history – that is, over about 160 years. It was 0.2 degrees C hotter than the 1990s which were, in turn, the previous [...]

I turned 60 today and, although I have long had an aversion to birthdays ending in zero, I have decided to flaunt this one.  I am sixty, I am sixty, I am sixty….
To mark this occasion I had a small birthday party yesterday at Pilu Restaurant at Freshwater Beach in Sydney where I enjoyed a [...]

My mother passed away last Saturday. 
The eulogy I delivered at her funeral today is over the fold.

I watched the Ian Plimer versus George Monbiot debate on Lateline the other evening – my initial response was at John Quiggin’s blog – and find it incredible that anyone attaches any credibility at all to the views of Professor Plimer.  Indeed, one wonders what Plimer is doing in a university if his responses during [...]

Yesterday I noticed large flocks of  White-throated needletails during the mid-afternoon while I was swimming at Mollymook Beach on the south coast of NSW.  It is the second large flock I have seen this year – the first I noticed at the Ching Tombs north-east of Beijing. 

Having studied and taught economics for just over 40 years I have no doubts as to who in my mind was the most influential and the greatest economist of the twentieth century and that was Paul Samuelson.  I learnt this morning that Paul Samuelson has just died at age 94.

While many have devoted time and effort trying to predict what will come out of the Copenhagen meetings I have largely elected to wait-and-see.  Even that is difficult – this article from Bridges I found useful. It is the first in a series and I will update.

Tony Abbott wins over Malcolm Turnbull narrowly and Joe Hockey is easily eliminated. 

The electricity industry provides a non-internationally traded good.  Australians cannot import electricity from anywhere.  That electricity prices based on coal fired generation will increase by around 20% over 2012/13  is not of great consequence to electricity generators if electricity prices are relatively inelastic (unresponsive to price)  because local providers can then increase prices without losing [...]

I normally don’t read the drivel put out by the NTEU (National Tertiary Education Union)   but a recent issue of  Advocate expresses views favouring rejection of the CPRS that are so foolish that they attract attention. 
The NTEU prefer a ‘national pollution reduction scheme that does not primarily rely on market mechanisms’.  The intention is presumably to increase the social costs of dealing [...]

I have not reported back on the Conference I attended at Peking University on ‘Trade, Urbanisation and the Environment’. Much of the conference was concerned with climate change.  

Rudd lets the Coalition have it and he is correct. An excellent speech – to the point and accurate – with sound economics – I have a strong intuition about who wrote it.  
It is 20 days until the Senate vote on the CPRS and 31 days to the meetings in Copenhagen.  The deceptions coming from the Liberal and [...]

An interesting paper at the recent PhD conference I attended (due to the ANU’s Vipin Arora) drew attention to the fact that the recent global savings glut would influence oil extraction rates via something akin to the well-known Hotelling rule provided that oil and bonds were substitute assets.  I prefer to think of this issue [...]

I am visiting China over the next week to participate in the Trade, Urbanisation and the Environment  Conference at Peking University, Beijing October 28-30, 2009. Feedback on the attached preparatory notes would be very appreciated.  Second draft. 

I can’t see the logic in Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson putting such a huge weight on coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a source of energy (AFR, 22 October, subscription only).  He talks with pride about the government’s $2.8b investment in CCS and says that alternative investments must stand on their own [...]