My piece in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post builds on my post of last week. I also included elements of the discussion (thanks!), particularly expanding the bits on import substitution. Having studied in the Netherlands, import substitution was long ago and far away, so I would understand why the average Dutchie would be oblivious to its drawbacks. In Ireland, on the other hand, this policy was tried in living memory.
One of my recommendations is apparently already being followed up.
In case you did not know already, Lucey and Lyons wrote a reminder.
Scholarometer is a new tool to rank academics. It uses crowdsourcing to disentangle people with common names, and to attribute people to disciplines and subdisciplines. It has a widget to display your results on your homepage. And it uses the h_f index, which allows for the comparison of people across disciplines. Paul Krugman beats Stephen Jay Gould.
This is old hat. Blame too much summer travel. It is worth highlighting nonetheless.
The High Court ruled in favour of a private bus company, trying to compete with Dublin Bus. The judge said the regulator was wrong to allow the subsidized, state-owned incumbent to share a route with a private operator. The judge berated the consultant to the regulator. The judge also ruled that the regulator wrongly delayed the processing of an application for a second license.
This is good news in itself, and it sets a precedent for future cases (although the legislation is about to change).
Note that the High Court implied that, for urban bus transport, competition should be for the market rather than in the market. That is right for all but the busiest routes.
Like Ireland, Spain hopes to buy the world supply of electric cars many times over. The Guardian reports that the Spanish scheme is somewhat behind target. One competitor less on the road to electrified transport!