Category Archives: Resources

Statistics for (non-mathematical) trade analysts

I teach a ‘sum­mer inten­sive’ grad­u­ate course in Trade Research Meth­ods at the Uni­ver­sity of Ade­laide. In five days we cover every­thing from the role of evi­dence in pub­lic pol­icy to how to write a report that your boss will read (and even under­stand). Most of my stu­dents have no for­mal train­ing in sta­tis­tics (or …

February 3, 2013 – 8:45 am | By pwg | Posted in Public policy, Resources, Trade | Comments (1)

Is it time for WTO 2.0?

Richard Bald­win, whose writ­ing I like and whose schol­ar­ship I respect, thinks so. But I dis­agree for rea­sons I spell out (after sum­ma­riz­ing RB’s argu­ment) in my paper that you can down­load here In brief: if we could really do what needs to be done in a WTO 2.0, then we wouldn’t need WTO 2.0 to …

February 3, 2013 – 8:21 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources, Trade | Comments (0)

WTO Whimpers

This weekend’s WTO Min­is­te­r­ial meet­ing in Geneva was unable to agree on how to keep goods and ser­vices mar­kets open to trade and com­pe­ti­tion. That’s no sur­prise, after ten years of repeated fail­ure to agree. Nor is it a cat­a­stro­phe given that for­mal bar­ri­ers are being held in check (more or less), for now, despite …

December 19, 2011 – 9:21 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Comments (0)

The mildness of global warming

I don’t doubt any more than you do that the aver­age atmos­pheric tem­per­a­ture has jumped around a lot but over­all has risen a few tenths of a degree in the past cen­tury or so. But when you see the change in con­text there’s just no basis for alarm, or for Aus­tralia to endorse the IPCC’s …

December 15, 2011 – 8:27 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Comments (0)

Black calls the kettle Rupert

It is dif­fi­cult to think of any­one less likely to offer an objec­tive assess­ment. Con­rad Black on why Rupert Mur­doch is a “great bad man”. “Although his per­son­al­ity is gen­er­ally quite agree­able, Mr Mur­doch has no loy­alty to any­one or any­thing except his com­pany. He has dif­fi­culty keep­ing friend­ships; rarely keeps his word for long; is …

July 14, 2011 – 3:07 pm | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged | Comments (0)

De Lacy on the Carbon Tax

“Keith De Lacy, chair­man of takeover tar­get Macarthur Coal, said yes­ter­day the absence of a viable alter­na­tive to coal to fuel Asia’s eco­nomic growth would main­tain high prices world­wide and pro­tect min­ers against the lat­est “attack” by the Labor gov­ern­ment on the indus­try.” Extract from The Aus­tralian Read the rest of the inter­view. De Lacy, …

July 13, 2011 – 9:16 am | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Tax cuts the price of MacArthur Coal

The Prime Min­is­ter is say­ing that today’s Peabody bid for Macarthur Coal demon­strates that the Gillard/Brown “coal tax” has not hurt the prospects of the Aus­tralian coal indus­try. But today’s Finan­cial TImes reveals that the Labor government’s taxes are hav­ing an impact on the value of Aus­tralian resource assets. Peabody has cut its offer price …

July 12, 2011 – 8:14 pm | By pwg | Posted in Resources | Tagged , , | Comments (0)