Providing fresh perspectives on public policies.

Age limit for talent competitions.

Damien — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 06:32:18 +0000

The international convention for a minimum age range for child labour is about 14-15 years of age (According to ILO guidelines). The young Bianca Ryan was 11 when she won the first season of America’s got talent.This led to a slew of young 10,11 ans 12 year olds signing up for the subsequent seasons of the show and other shows maybe.

I am not going to say that their parents are some what child labourers but I am going to raise some questions here:

1. If a child is not of legal age to work. Then is participating in a talent competition and becoming a television or music icon considered legal if not ethically suspicious?

2. Can we be suspect of parent’s intentions in sending their children to these competitions as a wish for their children to become a money-making tool, or an effort to nurture their children’s talent. The debate cannot be answered with a conclusive yes or no, but I think the question lies in finding indicators to separate the two types of parents.

and

3. If we think that there is nothing wrong with parents wanting to nurture their children, then where does the limit end? Sending them to training schools when they are just 2 or 3 years of age so they can develop the flexibility for gymnastics in future?

The Pigouvian Club

Damien — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:00:16 +0000

Professor Greg Mankiw proclaims himself a member of the Pigouvian club. The concept derives from the economist Arthur Cecil Pigou of U. Cambridge where he advocates taxes for negative externalities (actions which have a negative external effect on others in society) and subsidies for positive externalities (actions with positive external effect).

Of course this requires considerable government intervention and the argument posed by Chicago School free-market economists led by Milton Friendman is the inability to measure the appropriate amount of tax/subsidy without excessive distortion to the market in the other direction (i.e. too much taxes penalizing consumption and too much subsidies encouraging inefficient consumption). He also has a dated list of prominent members of the ‘club’.

Professor Mankiw also illustrates this in his Soda Tax op-ed on the NYT opinion page where he illustrates the concept on unhealthy foods. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard (and formerly Chief Economist of the IMF) discusses the use of taxes in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Now more than ever, with the financial and oil crises. We must stop to wonder if taxes are the solution to the problem of negative externalities. This is where policy comes in. Can regulation or taxation alone be an answer to the failure of markets? Although I too believe in free markets, I think that we must, at the end of the day, choose the lesser of two evils (i.e. taxes resulting in the inefficient use of resources is better than not taxing leading to the abusive exploitation of resources).

New blog: Fault Lines

Damien — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 07:00:31 +0000

The Financial Economist Raghu Rajan from U. Chicago now has a blog: Click here.

Macro-policy trilemma.

Damien — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 07:00:44 +0000

Professor Greg Mankiw explains the trilemma of 1. Free Capital Flow, 2.Monetary Policy Control & 3.Currency Exchange Rate and compares how the EU, US and China adopts a different combination of the macro-policy regime in his NYT post.

Maurice Obstfeld of UC Berkeley et al., meanwhile, has a more academic article on the Exchange-rate policy limited by the macro-trilemma using some 130 years of time-series data.

LKYSPP Blog.

Damien — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 07:00:18 +0000

The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has a blog monitoring trends in three specific areas: 1.Trade and Investment Facilitation, 2. Health Systems and 3. Energy Security.

Click here for the blog.