Professor Robert J Shiller won the Nobel prize this year (with Eugene Fama and Lars Peter Hansen) for his work on the analysis of prices of various assets. He repeated his Nobel lecture at the Yale School of Management today, and I grabbed a couple of screenshots from the livecast. His early work tested whether …
Author Archives: Lance Wiggs
What if you knew how to stop cycling deaths. Would you do anything?
Last April Auckland Transport received a report they had commissioned on Why do Cyclists run red lights?” A decommissioning the report was an excellent move by Auckland Transport. Sadly the report is only available as a powerpoint presentation, but what we can see is excellent. They observed over 22,000 vehicle, pedestrian and cyclist movements across five …
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A typically deadly commute – let’s fix it
My partner rides a bicycle to and from work. Her town bike has a basket on the front and back, and she is small, wears normal street clothes and obeys traffic rules. This is what a ride home looks like. (She takes the long way home to get exercise). She’s fast right? You might have caught two …
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How simple it can be to create protected bike lanes
This is a piece received via email from Gloria Williams (@caniwiwilliams) that she has given me permission to post. I read your thoughtful column on cycling safety this morning and I thought I’d send along this photo which shows just how simple it can be to create protected bike lanes. This is Vancouver, a …
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Confronting death
Today I arrived very early on the scene of a cycle versus truck fatality in Auckland today. The sight of a person lying motionless in the street with mangled bicycle in the background is chilling enough. The sounds of grief-stricken people comforting each other, the shock on the face of the woman in the car …
When will the next fatality happen at Lyttelton, Port of Christchurch?
I don’t know when, but this is a dreadful picture. The incident happened at Lyttelton Port of Christchurch on Saturday 4th January, 2014. It was a near miss to a fatal injury – the driver is lucky to be alive and was reported to be taken to hospital. Let’s hope that their injuries are …
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When people die at work it’s always a safety issue
Another tragic fatal injury from a work accident in New Zealand, this time on board a fertiliser ship berthed at Lyttelton, Port of Christchurch. My heart goes out to the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased man. What went wrong? Every accident is preventable, and there is never an acceptable excuse for placing any …
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Chorus: Turn around and go.
The short and light on detail Ernst Young Australia (EY) report on Chorus [thanks NBR] shows that while Chorus’s top line “$1 billion shortfall” statement was correct, it was also disingenuous. First of all, we already knew that the $1 billion gap is until 2020, which is 7 years away, which is an average of just …
NZ Customs Seizes Electronics – a full enquiry please
In the first week of January I’m leaving a Software Engineering gig for a US defense contractor to move to New Zealand. It’s great that New Zealand attracts high talented people from across the world, and we certainly need more software engineers from local and offshore sources. Due to the expense of shipping, my wife …
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Novopay: credit due for the progress
Not many people wanted responsibility for fixing the Novopay school employee payment system, but credit is due for the results as we approach schools’ year end for 2013. Here’s a chart of progress by pay-run from a year ago. 68 Schools with issues is still too many, but it seems the vast bulk of the …
Why are you accepting fatal risks Heart of Auckland City?
<update: I’ve changed the headline and edited this post as Auckland Council deny that this is under their purview. The Whitcoulls building and the Santa are both private. I’ve done some digging around, and it appears to be the responsibility of the Heart of the City campaign, who have a 3-day time-lapsed video of the Santa and …
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Not fair trading
Several of New Zealand’s largest retail businesses have been convicted of breaches of the Fair Trading act within the last five years. Some were smart enough to settle with the Commerce Commission before being convicted, but most admitted a breach of the act. Telecom was convicted and fined $500,000 in 2009, pleading guilty to 17 charges …
Let’s start paying GST on everything
I paid no GST when I purchased Lorde’s Pure Heroine album from Apple’s NZ iTunes store in September, but I did pay GST when I purchased a MacBook Air from Apple’s NZ online store. And while I do pay tax when I rent or purchase movies from the US iTunes store, but that’s a US …
Punakaiki Fund – The end for now
We sent the below to investors on Friday. Thanks are due not just to investors, but also to everyone who supported us. In particular though are our suppliers. We were amazed at the excellent support in particular we received from Buddle Findlay (Sacha Judd), Lee Ter Wal Design (Baruch Ter Wal), Pursuit PR (Paul O’Leary) …
Taxpayers Union: Teaparty wingnuts or rational economists?
Today saw the launch of the strangely named Taxpayer’s Union, a lobby group aimed at “giving taxpayers a voice in the corridors of power.” Given the taxpayers, that’s all of us, already have a voice each three years and through various processes, the Taxpayer’s Union deserves a bit more scrutiny. Are they rational economists looking …
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Lance Wiggs 