Andrew Leigh

On Sunday morning I joined Weekend Sunrise to talk about how economics can help make sense of run times in the Sydney City to Surf and much else besides - find out how by watching the clip:

My Chronicle column this week is on speechmaking.

Speeches Hold Power to Shape Actions, The Chronicle, 5 August 2014

In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama was under attack. The topic was the thorniest of US political issues: race. A scandal over Obama’s preacher, Jeremiah Wright, was threatening to derail his campaign.

Did Obama respond with a press conference? A 60 Minutes interview?  Neither. Instead, he booked a hall in Philadelphia, and gave a 37-minute speech about race and politics. Over four-fifths of Americans heard at least some of the speech, and it is credited with helping to win him that year’s Presidential election.

In the latest edition of The Spectator, I've reviewed Gordon Peake's Beloved Land: Stories, Struggles and Secrets from Timor-Leste. The book which paints a very different picture of the country than the one most Australians are familiar with; read on to find out how:

Guilt trip, The Spectator, 9 August 2014

If you had to pick one emotion to characterise Australia’s attitude towards East Timor, it would be guilt.

We are right to feel guilty about 1942, when Australian troops retreated from Timor, leaving many of the East Timorese who fought alongside us to be killed by the Japanese. We should feel guilty about 1975, when we failed to speak up about the invasion of East Timor. We ought to feel guilty about 1978, when we extended de jure recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor. And we should feel guilty too about 1999, because we could have done better in the process that led to the referendum and the many thousands who lost their lives.

And yet, most of the time, Australians don’t think about East Timor at all. Between cricket and celebrity cooking, Barack Obama’s latest speech and Lady Gaga’s latest outfit, there isn’t much space in the Australian news cycle for a nation of 1.2 million people sitting 700 kilometres off the coast of Darwin.

This morning I joined Marius Benson on ABC NewsRadio to talk about the worrying spike in unemployment in the latest ABS jobs figures. Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

RADIO INTERVIEW

ABC NEWSRADIO

FRIDAY, 8 AUGUST 2014

SUBJECT/S: Unemployment figures; Abbott Government’s unfair budget.

MARIUS BENSON: Andrew Leigh, on the unemployment figures: the Employment Minister Eric Abetz expressed disappointment but said you can't blame the government for this rise in unemployment because the Budget is still substantially blocked in the Senate. He blames, obviously, Labor for that. 

ANDREW LEIGH, SHADOW ASSISTANT TREASURER: These figures are extraordinarily bad for Australia. A 12-year high for unemployment and a nine-year low for the share of Australians in work. That's something that ought to deeply concern the government. The fact is Australia now has worse employment outcomes than in the Global Financial Crisis. The reason that we did well in the Global Financial Crisis was the swift actions of the Labor Government: taking on modest levels of debt in order to save hundreds of thousands of jobs. Part of the reason we're doing badly now is that we have a government which is trash-talking the economy, driving down business and consumer confidence, and firing people. I mean, in my own electorate in the ACT, we're seeing the firing of public servants which is adding to these unemployment numbers. 

BENSON: When you look at the numbers closely, the principal reason for the increase in the total is that the participation rate is up. So it's simply more people looking for work.

LEIGH: The economy isn't adding jobs as people are moving in to seek work. That ought to be a deep concern for the government. And governments ought to be concerned about their short-run and long-run policies. In the short run, in an environment where you've got the transition out of the mining boom, then you ought to have a government which is looking to create demand. This federal Budget has been doing anything but. It's taking away from those who have the highest propensity to spend - those who are at the bottom on the income spectrum - and it's cutting back on a range of government programs. And then in the long run, governments have to be investing in the productive capacity of the economy - in skills and infrastructure. And this again is a Budget that takes away from education, takes away from the National Broadband Network, takes away from urban rail. So it will hit the short- and the long-run jobs growth in the economy. 

Today the Herald Sun features an extract from my book 'The Economics of Just About Everything', exploring the link between money and team performance in the AFL. Read on...

Who's the Moneyball star of the AFL? Herald Sun, 7 August 2014

Moneyball tells the true story of how Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt) put together a great baseball team on a shoestring budget. The movie has two messages: first, money helps win games. Second, some sports teams spend their money more wisely than others. 

But how does Moneyball apply to the AFL? Money allows teams to buy better players (up to the salary cap), to hire better coaches and to buy experts like physiotherapists, masseurs and even statisticians. But do some AFL teams spend their cash more wisely than others?

Last night Peter van Onselen and I hashed out some ways the Abbott Government could make its rotten budget fairer. Here's the video and transcript:

Last night I joined the panel on ABC's The Drum to talk about how economics can help us make better sense of the world around us (and my new book 'The Economics of Just About Everything). Here's the interview:

Today's Breaking Politics segment featured Senator Simon Birmingham and I going head to head over the government's unfair budget, its unecessary Paid Parental Scheme and signs of a welcome back-down on the GP co-payment. Here's the transcript:

E&OE TRANSCRIPT

TV INTERVIEW

FAIRFAX BREAKING POLITICS

MONDAY, 4 AUGUST 2014

SUBJECT/S: Tony Abbott’s unfair Paid Parental Leave scheme; federal budget; government back down on GP co-payment

CALLUM DENNESS: I’m joined by Andrew Leigh, the local member for Fraser in the ACT, and Simon Birmingham, the Liberal Senator for South Australia. Good morning to you both. Simon Birmingham, the government has delayed introducing its legislation for the paid parental leave scheme, this is Tony Abbott’s signature policy. Why?

SIMON BIRMINGHAM, PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY TO THE MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Well it’s not about whether the legislation is introduced that matters, it’s about when a policy takes effect. We've always said that the paid parental leave scheme – which is of great benefit to working Australian women, particularly to low and middle income women – will take effect from 1 July 2015. That's still our policy intent and we'll legislate in a way to give effect to that. Right now in parliament, our priority is to work on the delivery of our budget measures to bring the budget back under control and particularly to make sure that we reign in the debt and deficit disaster left to us by the previous Labor government.

DENNESS: Why not introduce the legislation so people can see the details, see how the policy works, so that questions are answered. Isn't this a sign that your colleagues may not vote for it?

BIRMINGHAM: Well, the previous government was shambolic in the way it did many things. We want to be orderly in the way we do things and our approach has been, of course, to get on with those initial policy commitment with took effect from 1 July this year like the repeal of the carbon tax.  We managed to get that through in a manner where households will benefit from that repeal backdated to 1 July this year. We also, of course, want to see our budget measures implemented and that's what we are focusing on now, to bring the debt and deficit back under control, and we want to see programs like the Paid Parental Leave Scheme in place from 1 July next year, so we'll legislate that in due course, in a timely way, to have it take effect. But obviously it comes after those budget measures.

DENNESS: But you haven't yet legislated the mining tax, the carbon tax...

BIRMINGHAM: We have brought the mining tax to the parliament 

DENNESS: Yes, sorry, it hasn't passed the parliament yet. The carbon tax took longer than expected. These two policies were there was broad support across the chamber. On something like the Paid Parental Leave, wouldn't it have made sense to introduce it as early as possible?

BIRMINGHAM: It’s important to understand the implementation date difference - the aim for the mining tax and the aim for the carbon tax was to take affect effect from 1 July 2014. The aim for the Paid Parental Leave Scheme is to take effect from 1 July 2015. In between that we have a lot of budget measures we want to see delivered as well. So of course these things have to be taken in an orderly, sequential way. That's all that's happening, no surprises here.

DENNESS: Dean Smith is the latest Liberal to come out and criticise the policy. Are you afraid that your colleagues might not vote for this?

BIRMINGHAM: No, this is a policy we've taken to two elections. All Liberal and National Party MPs have stood on the platform of this policy.

DENNESS: Yet they continue to criticise it...

Inside Story is currently featuring an extract from my new book 'The Economics of Just About Everything', which looks at the unexpected benefits of Australia's gun buyback scheme. Read on...

THE UPSIDES OF THE BUYBACK

On the chilly Melbourne evening of Sunday 9 August 1987, nineteen-year-old former army cadet Julian Knight drank several beers at the Royal Hotel in Clifton Hill then packed a bag with an M14 semi-automatic, a Ruger 10/22 semi-automatic, and a Mossberg pump action 12-gauge shotgun. As he later told the police, “I wanted to see what it was like to kill someone.”

Most bullets are less than a centimetre wide, but when they enter a person’s body they make a far larger hole. One reason for this is that, once inside your body, a bullet begins to “yaw,” or tumble. Because bullets are a few centimetres long, the tumbling effect is far more destructive than if the bullet had continued to travel in a straight line.

In addition, a cushion of air known as a “pressure wave” precedes the bullet, temporarily creating a cavity inside the body that can be much wider than the trajectory of the tumbling bullet. The combined impact of a tumbling projectile and a pressure wave means that the entry wound can be as small as a fingernail, while the exit wound can be as large as a tennis ball.

The Australian Financial Review was good enough to publish an extract from my new book 'The Economics of Just About Everything', which you can read here.

If you like what you see, why not support your local independent bookstore by buying a copy?

AN ECONOMIST'S GUIDE TO ONLINE DATING 

What’s a desperate and dateless economist to do? The economics of dating comes down to three simple rules:

1. There is no ­per­fect match, but some matches are definitely better than others.

2. You won’t know how well suited you are to someone until you get to know them.

3. Time is scarce, so a decision based on limited information is probably better than no decision at all.

The challenge of dating is that you don’t have enough information and you don’t have enough time to get it. To give you an idea of just how severe the problem is, let’s imagine that you’re aged 18 to 25, and you’re trying to find the person you’re best suited to in that age range.

To begin, there are about 1.5 million men and 1.5 million women to choose from in Australia. If you picked a sex, and spent only three minutes with each of those people, then it would take 25 years of speed dating to find the person you liked the most. Things are harder still if you want more than three minutes to assess each person, if you’re bisexual, if you want someone older or if you think true love resides overseas.

Fortunately, economic theories are rarely deterred by problems involving large numbers. Better yet, economists are familiar with precisely this kind of problem. It’s called an “optimal-stopping problem”.