Posts by Rob Salmond
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Polity: Four thoughts on polling in…, in reply to FletcherB,
whether it’s phone or internet surveys… dont bullshit with the “this will just take 5 mins”
For Labour's robopolls we announced the exact number of questions to the person as well as the time, and had the whole interaction down to 90 seconds. We announced that timing accurately at the start of the call.
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Polity: Four thoughts on polling in…, in reply to mpledger,
How do robopolls select for people in the house or do they just take whoever answers the phone?
Technique differs by firm, but the most common practice is to take whoever answers the phone.
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Polity: Four thoughts on polling in…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
I wonder if it encourages or discourages participation.
Robopoll response rates are usually lower than live operator polls, but the per-call cost on robopolls is so low that it actually has better cost-effectiveness.
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Polity: Four thoughts on polling in…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Can you explain robopolling a bit more?
Sure. Instead of a live operator asking you questions and noting down your responses, a pre-recorded voice says things like "If you're planning to vote Labour, press 1. For National, press 2, etc. Then the robopoll records your touch tone responses.
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Polity: Behavioural economics and Hekia Parata, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Good news for Rob: behavioural economics and managerialism are not the same thing. Phew!
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Polity: Behavioural economics and Hekia Parata, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I’d say it’s a positive if schools spend their money on salaries for actual teachers instead of trips to Japan or having a former AB coach the rugby team.
I'd say those aren't the only two options...
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Polity: Behavioural economics and Hekia Parata, in reply to Sacha,
You seem to be labouring under the delusion that teachers make school budget decision
No, not really. But I am saying it's much harder for a BOT to decide to fund a jazz band if there's no teacher with their hand up to run it, maintain the equipment, and so on.
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Polity: Key peddles cynical “interest…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
You miss my point. It is always true that one of the factors that determine what the OCR and other interest rates are is government policy, particularly fiscal policy. So it is always true for them to “claim credit” to a certain extent.
Not quite. Key raised the hypothetical that if Labour had been in power rather than National, NZ mortgage holders would be $16,000 pa worse off. There is zero evidence to support that claim.
Put another way, while fiscal policy undoubtedly can have an impact on interest rates, the record suggests National's fiscal policy 09-16 and Labour's fiscal policy 00-08 had about the same impact on interest rates, not the differing impacts the PM claimed.
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Polity: Key peddles cynical “interest…, in reply to Matthew Hooton,
@Matthew:
prime minister's can (and do and always will) argue that interest rates are lower than they would be under the other party because it its "irresponsible spending promises / tax cut proposals"
I'm sure you're right that Prime Ministers will always claim their policies are better for interest rates, but sometimes the evidence will be on their side, and sometimes it won't.
You may try to fight this one blog post at a time but prime ministers will do what prime ministers do.
When the evidence is not on Key's side, I'll sometimes let people know. I figure some people might care about the facts, even if not everybody does.
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Polity: Why did the TPP fail?, in reply to Tinakori,
Ah, exhumed from the graveyard of economic thought, the economic zombie fallacy that there has to be reciprocity for the benefits to be realised. And I bet MFAT did not think that reciprocity was required for trade liberalisation to be effective.
You're right that MFAT felt there was some benefit to NZ lowering its borders unilaterally.
But it also felt there was more benefit to NZ if other countries lowered their borders, too (because exports). And MFAT explicitly marketed the NZ experience as proof of the virtue of unilateral liberalisation, and were shocked when other countries didn't buy it.