A few thoughts on demand management and the SA economy

So many ideas so little time to write blogs. But I have been writing a few Afrikaans posts on the School's blog. They are part of the resources we are trying to develop for high school Economics learners.

• The first is on the demand side of the economy: C + I + G + X-Z and how monetary and fiscal policy can be used to manage aggregate demand.
• The second links this to the SA economy and policymakers' room to maneuver at the moment. The short answer is that is is little that the Reserve Bank and/or the Minister of Finance can do at the moment to boost aggregate demand and economic growth.

Waldo, Mr Uctu, Prof Jafta, Prof du Plessis and Dr Boshoff

In addition I made a quick visit to Stellenbosch for a PhD defence this week. It was a first for me, in South Africa and as part of the panel. The candidate, Mr Uctu worked on bio-technology firms that are spun off from universities and presented some interesting results.

Also, MSc classmate and friend from Warwick, Nick Powdthavee was in the international news with his research. In new work with Andrew Oswald he found that winning the lottery makes people more right-wing. They got mentions by:

• Krugman in his New York Time column.
• Marginal Revolution, and
• Mother Jones blog.

along with many newspaper stories and some TV coverage. Congrats Nick.

Finally, a link to a cool post in the @Noahpinion archive: Economists, release your inner nerd! I particularly liked the bit: "But for Milton Friedman's sake, don't be a science nerd!"