The morning's worthies:
- iPredict's PredictIt gets another stay of execution
- Kainga Ora has been making great progress in streamlining builds. So long as they don't get burned down. Perhaps it would help if nearby owners could reasonably expect Kainga Ora's tenants to be better neighbours. It's the rare prominent cases that create reputations.
- Jason Sorens says that bad zoning leads to dysfunctional housing markets and high prices, leading to bad ideas about how to fix the problem. A variant on Caplan's Idea Trap.
- Problems that wouldn't exist under proper road pricing and if debt for new roads could be backed by road-user revenues.
- I wish for a world in which Andrew Leigh were a Labour MP rather than a Labor MP.
- Resale price maintenance. It is still fun to think through the conditions under which it's efficiency-enhancing substitute for vertical integration or otherwise efficient rather than potential indication of cartel-type mechanisms. The typical presumption is the latter, but it isn't necessarily the case.
- ComCom price regulation of the proposed 3-waters entities will follow standard drill utility regulation. EnergyNews rightly points out that prohibitions on water suppliers earning a profit (remember that standard state-owned enterprises and council-owned enterprises can!) will "limit the extent to which profit can reward and incentivise efficiency and innovation".
- NZ mayors pushing for city deals. Seems antithetical to Labour's current centralising DNA. Maybe some future better government will dust off the report we'd written back in 2015.
