Tuesday 8 May 2012

NZAE Annual Conference

Blogging from me has been very quiet this year, owing to a combination of it being my more intensive teaching semester and working on the 2012 annual conference of the New Zealand Association of Economists.

So in lieu of a regular post, let me use this forum to shill for the conference. It is being held in Palmerston North from Wednesday June 27 - Friday June 29. Early-Bird registration closes on Thursday so be in quick. To register, go to the conference website here and follow the link to on-line registration.

Followers of New Zealand economics blogs will find some familiar material. I packaging up some of my tax posts into a paper; Eric will be talking about minimum wages; and Sam Richardson of Fair Play and Forward Passes, will be talking about some of his work on over-egging the economic benefits of sports stadia and the like. James Z from TVHE, and Bill-Kaye Blake from Groping Towards Bethlehem are also presenting papers. Finally, we are also featuring a round-table discussion on the impact economics blogs, featuring all the above authors plus Matt Nolan of TVHE. Berk Ozler from the World Bank, who blogs at their site, will lead off the session with a paper quantifying the impact of economics blogs.

It would be great to meet followers of the blogsphere in PN.

8 comments:

  1. Lost me with "being held in Palmerston North".

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  2. I can not understand why you say your blogging is quiet Eric. You are intensive and productive.
    Please tell wife and children from me that I think you always work too much.
    They will understand

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  3. @Peterquixote:

    I have been so quiet that when I finally do post, you think I am Eric!

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  4. I see austerity has kicked in for economics conferences.
    Is the venue a tent or caravan?

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  5. @V

    It's not austerity, but a two-year-old decision by the New Zealand Association of Economists to take the conference away from the three main centres for the first time in along time. Downtown PN is a perfeclty nice place to be attending a conference. There isn't much else going on there, but when economists get together, they find the cut and thrust of conference interactions sufficiently entertaining that they have no need of extra-conference attractions!

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  6. What's up with all the NZ placenames that have directions in them? West Melton but no Melton or East Milton from which a West Milton would need to distinguish itself; Palmerston North; Havelock North. Are there others?

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  7. Not sure about West Melton etc, but Palmerston is a town near Dunedin and Havelock is near Nelson. The 'North' versions are both of those are in the North Island.

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    1. Ok. So Kiwis worried about being confused between some town near Dunedin and some town north of Wellington, so they put "North" on the latter.

      Meanwhile, here in Christchurch, we have Lyttelton Road that goes nowhere near Lyttelton, Selwyn Road in Lyttelton that does not lead you out to Selwyn District that borders Christchurch, a different Selwyn Road south of downtown Christchurch that has nothing to do with the Selwyn Road in Lyttelton and that also does not take you to Selwyn. Never mind all the roads that change names a half-dozen times without your ever turning.

      But having two towns with the same name separated by the freaking Cook Straight would be too confusing?

      You Kiwis are weird.

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