A Wellington House-Hunting tool

Oh my, but does Wellington have one very useful little house-shopping tool.


Wellington Region Combined Earthquake Hazard on Koordinates

Put in any address, and it will tell you the combined earthquake hazard risk.

I expect it would be easy for TradeMe Property to scrape this data via the API; it's Creative Commons 3.0.

While I'd appreciate it if TradeMe got this running while I'm house-hunting, their implementing it might lead to a price premium on quake-safe housing. I'd consequently prefer that they hold off until after I've purchased, despite the minor inconvenience of having to manually search each address.

The value of reputation: NZ Public Health edition

So the Ministry of Justice relied on SHORE to produce some sensible estimates of the price elasticity of alcohol demand in New Zealand for its report on minimum alcohol pricing. It didn't go well. Recall what the Ministry of Justice report had to say about the elasticity estimates produced by SHORE:

Another significant concern is that the size of the elasticity estimates generated by AC Nielsen and the SHORE and Whariki Research Centre are very large compared to international estimates, and result in significant changes in consumption when the various pricing options are analysed. The large off-licence elasticities may be driven by the fact that both regular prices and promotional prices are included in the elasticities. The large on-licence elasticities are likely to be a consequence of a reasonably small sample size and cross-sectional data. 

It was decided that the significant reductions in consumption estimated using NZ elasticity estimates are not a realistic representation of what is likely to happen in reality and are contrary to all international evidence of the responsiveness of alcohol consumers to changes in price. 

So SHORE produces estimates that are "not a realistic representation of what is likely to happen in reality and are contrary to all international evidence". I'd discussed the MoJ report here. 

Sally Casswell is Director of SHORE. 

From the latest round of Health Research Council grants:

2014 Funding Round – Project
Professor Sally Casswell
Massey University, Auckland
Alcohol Policy Interventions in New Zealand (APINew Zealand) - effects of change in sale and supply$1,191,469
36 months
Lay summaryThis research investigates alcohol consumption in New Zealand to measure the effects of changes brought about by new legislation regulating the sale and supply of alcohol. It follows the same people over time surveying them not only about their drinking patterns but also issues which may be affected by policy: for example purchasing patterns: time of day they buy alcohol, how far they travel, how much they pay. The research also measures the alcohol environment using available data and key informant interviews to predict how people's behaviour might change. Those who report large changes in their drinking behaviour will be followed up in more depth to explore what policy and non-policy influences have affected their behaviour. This New Zealand study is part of an international collaboration and allows comparisons between different countries. The goal is to inform the development and implementation of effective alcohol policy and reduce alcohol related harm.

$1.1 million to Casswell from the government. SHORE's general survey work at least is more reliable than their attempt at modelling elasticities. Their analysis on the survey work is often pretty bad, but the surveys themselves are potentially useful.

When I'd pointed to declining youth drinking rates a few months ago, Casswell wrote this letter to the NZMJ critical of the much much smaller amount of money that the Brewers Association provided as grant to the University of Canterbury. One-sided skepticism is lovely.

Meanwhile, the University of Otago's temperance crusaders scored another research grant from the government: $1.190 million (a thousand dollars less than Casswell got, for some reason). Here's the HRC summary. I note these bits from Otago's press release on their awarded grant:

Lead investigator Dr Brett Maclennan says the new Act is intended to reduce harm resulting from the excessive consumption of alcohol but it omits almost all of the evidence-based strategies recommended by the Law Commission in its 2010 review.

...Professor Kypros Kypri, a co-investigator on the project, says that “public desire for better alcohol policy is very strong and people were disappointed at the way the Law Commission recommendations for reform were watered down. It is important to know whether the new law is effective and we are delighted to see independent peer-reviewed research funded in this area.”

Well, at least we know their priors. Kypri isn't at Otago but rather at Newcastle, where he argues that the drinking age should increase to 21.

Recall that, in 2008, National ran on an anti-nanny-state ticket. But they keep shovelling funding towards outfits that seem guaranteed to demand ever-tighter controls on alcohol.

Previously:

• On Stillman SHORES
• Increasing alcohol excise is great, if you assume the right things
• Some useful context

Value for Money: election broadcasting edition

New Zealand subsidises party political advertising during the election campaign. Parliament allocates funding to the Electoral Commission for the Broadcasting Allocation, which funds short political broadcasts. It appears that Parliament allocates a fixed amount of funding, which the Electoral Commission then divvies up amongst the various parties in accordance with their support.

I generally oppose the Broadcasting Allocation. Mechanisms like this always need to tread a careful line between overly advantaging incumbents and providing too-generous of taxpayer support to fringe movements opposed by most voters. So National and Labour get about two-thirds of the monetary allocation and just under half of the available minutes.

But, if we're going to have this kind of thing, I can think of no better use of the money than its being provided to The Civilian Party. Recall that The Civilian Party is something of a protest movement promising free ice cream and llamas. The New Zealand Taxpayers Union, which I generally support, has opposed this use of government funding. But where the funding comes out of a fixed pot, it's only at the expense of the other parties: were The Civilian Party's allocation removed, the other parties' allocations would be increased.

I'm willing to bet that viewers will receive far more utils from the two minutes of Civilian Party advertising than they will from that of any other party. Funding reallocations away from The Civilian Party will reduce total national utility. Redirecting funds away from the other parties and towards The Civilian Party, on the other hand, seems a fine idea. 

I think the NZTU got this one wrong. 

In the alternative, I humbly submit my request to get to be the one who decides which parties are really jokes in 2014. The list isn't short.

Totally ACE

Labour proposes re-funding Adult and Continuing Education. David Cunliffe writes:

“ACE gives Kiwis the chance to make their lives better; be it through literacy and numeracy classes to improve their employment chances, computer training for new career options or ESOL classes to ease their settlement into their new communities.

“A 2008 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found that for every government dollar invested in this sector there was at least a $16 return.

Loyal readers will remember that figure. Four years ago, when it came out, Matt Nolan highlighted this bit:

So some part of $171m-$254m can be seen as a positive externality, a pretty indirect one but lets be generous.

Taking the “possibly policy relevant” factors, and accepting the seemingly artificially inflated numbers (they state that it HALVES the chance of these 400,000 odd people being involved in a crime over their lifetime – see page 57), then the average return per dollar invested is about $2. Furthermore, that is an average not a “marginal” amount (contrary to the claims of the report mind you – see page 5). The marginal return (the amount of social return we will get if we increase spending by a small amount) is likely to be well below $1 per dollar.

Given what I feel has been a generous interpretation of the marginal social benefit, the suggestion would be that we should cut back on public funding for adult community education.

That number on crime seemed insanely high. So I checked it out and then wrote:

There would be zero demand for these kinds of shonky reports if journalists used a tiny bit of critical thinking before parroting back the numbers, but journalists would only do this if the public much cared about accurate numbers. A quick flip through "Appendix A", in which they justify their shonky analysis, makes pretty clear what's going on. A sample:

This [roughly $250 million] is the PV of the savings in the average cost of crime as a result of an individual being involved in full time employment, participating in higher education, improving their self confidence, and being more involved in their community. Research shows that all these factors have an effect on reducing a person’s likelihood of participating in a crime by up to 50%. Depending on the level of improvement in the above indicated factors, this is calculated as the PV of the reduction in the average costs of a crime multiplied by individual’s likelihood of being involved in a crime (where everyone above 15 in NZ is given an equal likelihood of being involved in a crime).

So folks taking adult ed courses are assumed to have a 50% reduction in their chances of committing a crime. PWC cites a 1999 working paper as evidence; a 2004 AER piece by the same author has the crime reduction associated with high school graduation as being less than half that figure (14-26%). This latter study uses a far more cautious identification strategy: changes in minimum age of dropping out of school as instrument for completion rates. And note that the numbers cited are for HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION, not for taking a night course in Indian cooking.

For some reason, I'm reminded of Susan Feigenbaum and David Levy's work distinguishing the difference between scientific fraud and biased research.

Fortunately, Finance Minister Bill English is no idiot:

Hon Maryan Street: How does the Minister compare the return on the investment of $35 million into private schools with the PricewaterhouseCoopers’ calculation of the return on the investment in adult and community education funding in 2008 of between $54 and $72 for each dollar of funding?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: Well, if we believed PricewaterhouseCoopers’ evaluation, we would spend $10 billion on adult and community education and would have an economy that is twice the size it currently is. That is clearly the kind of nonsense that the previous Government relied on.

Exactly.

Would "useful idiots" be too strong a term for folks who take these reports' findings uncritically?

Maybe re-funding adult and continuing education is worthwhile, maybe it isn't. The case can't really rest on that PWC study.

Ivory cycles

Brendan Moyle explains the surge in elephant poaching.

All else equal, we should expect that poaching increases with political instability that makes it harder to enforce an optimal permitting system. We should also expect that poaching increases where shipping costs drop, as the returns to poaching then increase. Finally, where interest rates drop substantially, we should expect greater investment in lower orders of ivory production rather than higher orders: the poaching, rather than the carving. Building a stockpile of ivory for later carving makes more sense than ramping up carving at increased cost but getting little return on the proceeds of those sales.

And that's what Brendan finds.

The recent and rapid increase in elephant poaching has caused international alarm. A panel-data regression model was employed to identify possible causes of this upsurge. The large decline in shipping costs after the GFC is strongly correlated to the rise in large shipments interdicted in recent years. Other factors include the decline in global interest rates, which motivates increased stockpiling by criminal organisations. A sharp decline in stability in Africa, especially Central Africa can also be linked to the raw ivory seizures. This evidence also indicates that the recent upsurge is more supply-driven than it is demand-driven. Criminal organisations appear to be taking advantage of current conditions to transfer and store ivory in stockpiles out of Arica. This raises doubt that the upsurge is demand-driven event related to the current markets for ivory. 

I love this kind of rich institutional story paired with empirical analysis. Brendan spends a lot of time in China figuring out just what's there going on. 

He also warns that things could easily get worse: the greater the poaching, the more risky is the option to store tusks on live elephants for later poaching. Worse, some of the recent supply-side measures may be reinforcing poachers' expectations that future price increases mean they should poach more now for stockpiling.

A Nation of Sugar Criminals [Updated: Crampton's been punked]

Update: The CBC show that produced the report is satire. So everything below falls under the "Eric's been punked again" file. I blame both Josh Gans's and Alex Tabarrok's earlier tweeting of the story. Previously in the "Crampton's been punked" file: Jim Henson meets Ayn Rand.

Thanks to the CBC's @Geoff_Turner for the heads-up.

Original post follows below.



Last year, it was the heist from the Canadian Maple Syrup Cartel.

Now we find out that Canadians have been smuggling Kinder Surprise Eggs to the Americans.

A 500 ft. tunnel running from the outskirts of Abbotsford, B.C. to a shed in Sumas, WA was detected late last week by Dale Lawson while he was walking his dog: "Buster got into this weird looking shed," say Lawson, "he comes out with chocolate in his mouth." 

Lawson, worried that his dog could get sick, took the chocolate and found it contained a plastic capsule. "I thought maybe it was drugs but when I opened it up it was a little plastic fox dressed like a queen. I called the police right away."

Police arrived just as Melanie Russet, Marg Spooner and Lynn Dodwell emerged from the tunnel with flats of chocolate eggs. The three were taken into custody and more arrests on both sides of the border are expected.

It's estimated that up to 800,000 eggs cross the border every year and while there have yet to be any reported fatalities, it's only a matter of time before a child chokes on a tiny house with googly eyes or a pen shaped like a ski.

First off, people like Dale Lawson exemplify everything that's wrong with America. If your government is evil enough to ban children from getting chocolate eggs with toys inside, and you find a tunnel being used by heroic candy smugglers to bring Kinder Surprise to American kids, your first thought sure as heck oughtn't be "Hey, let's call the cops about this little plastic toy fox dressed like a queen." The nation that overthrew George III over trivial levels of taxation now produces people who call in the cops for chocolates. Did Patrick Henry really say, "If you see anything weird, report it immediately"?

But the story does help to remind us of the futility of some kinds of bans. If smugglers can make a buck by sneaking Kinder Surprise Eggs under the American border....

Prohibitionist Electioneering

The usual bunch has issued a statement calling for more restrictions on alcohol. 

A four-point "call for action on alcohol", issued today, has been signed by the heads of general and specialist groups of doctors and nurses, academic researchers and the heads of the Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Salvation Army churches.

It calls on the incoming government after the September 20 election to implement Law Commission proposals from 2010 to raise alcohol taxes by 50 per cent, impose a minimum price for alcohol to stop price discounting, and phase out alcohol sponsorship and advertising except for "objective product information".

The 50 per cent tax hike would result in a 10 per cent increase in retail prices of alcoholic drinks. National Addiction Centre director Professor Doug Sellman, who organised the statement, said such a price increase would cut consumption by 5 per cent.

The Herald embeds their full statement, available here.

They open with a quote,

"If alcohol were a communicable disease, a national emergency would be declared." 

Later, they write,

The argument is often heard that policies to slow the supply of alcohol through increasing price or reducing physical availability diminish personal freedom and autonomy of "ordinary New Zealanders". It is time we moved from the self-interested and sometimes destructive "freedom to" (... drink as much as you want; supply alcohol to your children's friends; promote and sell alcohol anywhere any time) and consider the "freedom from" the harms caused by heavy drinking.

Those two together do get to the crux of things. The expansionist view of public health deems personal consumption decisions as akin to a communicable disease, puts no value on that individuals derive consumption benefits from alcohol, and largely ignores existing regulatory constraints including:

• If you're at a bar, and you're intoxicated, the bar can face pretty substantial penalties for continuing to serve you. Maybe you can drink "as much as you want" at home, but you can't do it in a licensed venue. I'm not sure what the prohibitionists will come up with to ban people from getting drunk at home, but I'd be surprised if they didn't come up with something. 
• The latest round of regulatory changes prohibited you from serving alcohol to your children's friends if they're minors unless you have a permission note from their parents. 
• You cannot promote alcohol in advertising on television outside of the watershed hours; you cannot sell alcohol outside of the permitted and constrained hours that vary from venue to venue and jurisdiction to jurisdiction. 

The market's already pretty heavily regulated. But all of those existing regulations, they never count for much. It's the next set of regulations that will make us the Shining City on the Hill. 

Back to their missive:

The 'sophisticated' alcohol culture promised twenty-five years ago by advocates of the liberalising Sale of Liquor Act 1989 has turned out to be an increasingly endemic heavy binge drinking culture in New Zealand [De Bonnaire et al 2005; Wells et al 2006]. The cost of alcohol harm is estimated to run into billions of dollars, money that would be much better spent on community benefits.

Ok. First off, here's the time path on per capita alcohol availability. Here's just how bad things have gotten since liberalisation in 1989. It's really terrible. You might want to cover your eyes and peek through the cracks in your fingers.

Can you see the huge per capita increase in alcohol consumption that came about because of liberalisation? It's there. Just squint a bit more.

Heavy drinking or binge drinking? The WHO reports [discussed here] that 5.6% of drinkers (4.5% of the population) consumed at least 6 standard drinks on at least one occasion in the last 30 days. So roughly one person in 20 had the equivalent of six 330 mL Tui, or just under two 500mL bottles of Epic's Hop Zombie Double IPA.* Even at that low a threshold, only one in twenty are drinking that much at least monthly. 

The WHO report lets us benchmark New Zealand internationally. Sure, there are other measures of everything within NZ, but the WHO figures at least run a common measure across different countries allowing for international comparisons. Why might international comparisons matter? 

Here are some of the countries lauded by Alcohol Action NZ. Quoting from them:

• Scotland’s parliament has legislated for a minimum price per standard unit of alcohol of 50p, to eliminate ultra-cheap products, although this is now being challenged in various courts by the alcohol industry.

• Finland, like other Scandinavian countries, has excise tax on alcohol about twice as high as New Zealand. [Note from Eric: the Productivity Commission noted New Zealand's particularly high alcohol prices. Yeah, the Scandanavians have high taxes, but we're hardly cheap.]

• The whole of the USA has a minimum drinking age for alcohol of 21 years.

• Ireland has off-licence trading hours of 10.30am - 10pm Monday – Saturday, 12.30 10pm on Sundays. California has a blanket closure of on-licences at 2am.

• The South African government has recently formulated legislation to ban all alcohol advertising and sponsorship, in even more stringent fashion than has existed in France for more than 20 years, although is now bracing itself for attack by the alcohol industry during the upcoming parliamentary process.

• Most countries of the world have a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) drink-driving limit of 0.05 or less, including Australia. Countries with a BAC of 0.02 or 0.03 include Sweden, Norway, Poland and Japan.

• Norway has resisted the influence of the European Union in maintaining strong regulation of alcohol in the face of trade agreements.

Ok. So Scotland, Finland, the US, Ireland, South Africa, France, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Poland and Japan are singled out as being super-awesome anti-alcohol campaigners. Let's check some outcomes.

First, let's look at age-standardised prevalence of alcohol use disorders. The WHO puts New Zealand at 3.4% prevalence, lower than all countries in the Western Pacific Region other than Brunei (1.7%), Japan (3.3%), Malaysia (2.3%), and Singapore (0.9%). See p. 320 of the appendix. Were New Zealand in Europe, we'd be much lower than average: we're lower than any European country other than Italy (1.2%), Malta (3.2%), Netherlands (1.3%), Romania (2.6%), Spain (1.4%), Tajikistan (0.8%), and Turkey (2.6%).

And how about those super-great campaigner countries? France (6.0%), Finland (7.7%), Ireland (7.3%), Sweden (9.9%), Norway (8.7%), Poland (8.7%), and Scotland (UK is 12.1%, no separate Scottish figure) all have worse rates of alcohol use disorders. Similarly, the USA (7.8%) and South Africa (5.4%) are worse than NZ. Only Japan (3.3%) is slightly below the NZ rate. If we fully replicated the experience of those countries with policies lauded by Alcohol Action NZ, we'd have worse rates of alcohol use disorders.   

Ok, maybe our problem isn't with alcohol use disorders. It's that nasty binge drinking. Let's look at at the prevalence of heavy episodic drinking in the WHO figures. The table at page 312 of the appendix puts NZ at 4.3%. Why is this lower than the 4.5% listed above? Because it's age-standardised: some differences in drinking across countries depend on demographic differences. Let's again compare NZ with our neighbours, with Europe, and with those countries whose policies are lauded by Alcohol Action NZ.

In the Western Pacific Region, Brunei (0.5%), Cambodia (1.2%), Kiribati (2.4%), Malaysia (0.3), the Philippines (1.6%), Singapore (4.2%) and Vietnam (1.3%) have lower rates; 13 countries including Australia, China, and Japan (18.4%!!) have higher rates.

In Europe, Turkey (0.2%), Tajikistan (1.0%), and Andorra (4.2%) have lower rates. Every single other country in Europe has higher rates of heavy episodic drinking. Every single one. 

Among those countries lauded by Alcohol Action, France (29.8%), Finland (35.9%), Ireland (36.5%), Sweden (24.3%), Norway (12.6%), Poland (5.4%), Scotland (UK figure of 27.1%), the USA (16.2%), South Africa (9.8%), and Japan (18.4%) ALL have higher rates of heavy episodic drinking. Every one of them. 

If we look at the WHO figures, it is utterly, utterly absurd to claim that New Zealand is some kind of binge drinking outlier. The Ministry of Health uses a different standard for potentially hazardous drinking and have higher figures; they also report that rates of hazardous drinking are declining, and especially among younger cohorts. MoH puts hazardous drinking rates at 19% of drinkers, with 80% of the population being drinkers. So 15.2% of the overall population. Even if we use that figure instead of the WHO one on heavy episodic drinking, we still get a lower rate than most of the countries lauded by Alcohol Action.

Fundamentally, how we stand relative to other countries shouldn't matter much: if a policy is cost-effective it should be implemented. But we have to define cost-effectiveness comprehensively, taking due account of the costs the policy imposes on individual consumption. And, that countries with lauded policies tend to have worse drinking outcomes than we do might just give us pause.

Previously:

• Seeing what you want to see: Minimum pricing edition
• More drinking stats
• Increasing alcohol excise is great, if you assume the right things
• On Stillman SHOREs: the effects of reducing NZ's alcohol purchase age
• Drinking time
• Drinking Ed
• More binge drinking reports
• Minimum pricing
• Minimum alcohol pricing and economic rents
• Markets hate profits: minimum pricing edition
• Petrol tax:speeding :: alcohol tax:binge drinking
• The Omniscience Constraint
• Public health and the regulatory state
• Minimum pricing
• Minimum prices and mortality risk
• Evidence and minimum pricing
• About that Canadian study...
• Alcohol minimum pricing
• A hopefully concluding note on the price elasticity of alcohol

* I only chose this one because I happened to have a bottle in my office supply.