Tag Archives: economics

Income Inequality in Australia and the US

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A topic that the New York Times visits from time to time is that of income inequality. In the United States, the gap between the highest and lowest earners has been increasing over the last 80 years or so. A recent article returns to this theme and provides further insight into the trend. It cites research from the new book “Unequal Democracy” by Larry M. Bartels, which indicates that income inequality has increased far more under Republican presidents than under Democrats.

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Australian Grocery Prices on the Rise?

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Last month, the Australian Government launched the GroceryChoice initiative, with the goal of helping consumers find the cheapest place to shop for their groceries. As I wrote at the time, the GroceryChoice website allows users to compare prices in a given area, but comparisons across areas are not made easy. Undeterred, I simply scraped all the data from the web-site for easier analysis. Today GroceryChoice released prices for the month of September, making it possible to start analysing prices over time as well as by region and retailer.

The website provides prices for a number of specific grocery “baskets” (Fruit & Vegetables, Meat & Seafood, etc.) as well as for a more general “Basic Staples” basket. A crude average of prices of this Basic Staples basket around the country would suggest that prices are on the rise, having increased from $75.41 for August to $75.97 for September. However, this figure should be taken with caution. Quite apart from the fact that this analysis does not take into account the differing population sizes in each region, there is also significant variation across the different retailers, as is evident in the chart below.


“Basic Staples” Prices by Retailer (A$)

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Olympic Medals per Capita – Update

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Since my last post, about Beijing 2008 Olympic rankings by population and economy size, there has been a lot of action in the medals per capita stakes. The Bahamas knocked Jamaica from the number one spot with a Bronze in the triple-jump, only to have Jamaica regain the crown as it continued to win Gold in track and field. Then, with a Silver in the Men’s 4 x 400m relay, the Bahamas got to the front again in what is now an unassailable lead.

For the blow-by-blow on MPC, visit the LA Times MPC blog. I can’t help mentioning that Australia has now pulled ahead of New Zealand!

Previously, the charts I used were static, unable to keep up with these rapid changes so, although the Games are drawing to a close now, I thought I would include Swivel charts which will update as the last results come through. This time I am showing rankings in terms of a simple total medal count per million of population (previously I used a points system, 3 points for Gold, etc).
Beijing Olympics 2008: Medals per mil. Population by Country
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Digging into GroceryCHOICE

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Earlier this week, South Australian senator Nick Xenophon raised concerns that the Government’s FuelWatch scheme would lead to higher petrol prices and that small independent petrol retailers were likely to be disadvantaged by the scheme. So it looks likely that the FuelWatch legislation will fail to pass the senate and then fade into oblivion. I can’t say I’m too upset about this as I have been critical of the scheme. Furthermore, falling oil prices have led to a fall of around 20 cents/litre in petrol prices which takes much of the sting out of the issue.

So now I am free to turn my attention to another Australian Government initiative, GroceryCHOICE**. This scheme aims to “[help] consumers find the cheapest supermarket chain in their area without having to compare hundreds of prices”. Every month a survey is conducted of prices on around 500 different grocery items at over 600 supermarkets around the region. These prices are aggregated into “baskets” of goods in the following categories:
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A Tipping Point for Starbucks?

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On 1 July 2008, Starbucks announced the closure of around 600 outlets in the US. More drastically, on 29 July they then announced that 61 of the 84 Australian outlets would be closing.

Over on BeyondDigitalMedia, Chris Bishops posted an interesting examination of the challenges Starbucks has faced in the Australian market and goes on to predict that Gloria Jeans will suffer a similar fate.

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Update on Sydney Petrol Prices

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A little while ago I wrote about the relationship between crude oil prices and the price Sydney motorists are paying for petrol at the pump. The Australian Automobile Association (AAA) has now released their price data for June and, not surprisingly, prices continued to track moves implied by rising crude oil prices. The simple regression model suggested that average prices would be up 8 cents/litre. The AAA data shows a rise of 10 cents/litre in the average Sydney price.

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The Gradual Demise of the Compact Disc

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The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA), after taking a look at sales for the first half of 2008, has run crying poor to the Herald Sun. While they have not yet released these figures to the public, they presumably continue the trend evident in published figures for 2006 and 2007.

Australian Music Sales

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The Price of Carbon for Petrol

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Commenting on my petrol prices post, Mark Lauer suggested that excise on petrol should in fact be increased to deal with negative externalities:

Personally I think we should be increasing the excise. It represents the many negative externalities that car use in our society creates: carbon emissions, use of space for (larger) roads; materials, construction and maintenance of (larger) roads; particulate pollution; deaths and injuries from road accidents, and so on, all of which scale with mileage and hence fuel use. And our understanding of all these factors is moving in the direction of increased disutility. Hence the charges should be increased.

I’ve been thinking about petrol and carbon emissions a bit over the last few weeks, so this is as good a prompt as any to put down my thoughts here on the Mule. I should also point out that I have Mark to thank for the back of the envelope calculation that I’ll discuss here.

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Sydney Petrol Prices

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Soaring petrol prices have led to all sorts of calls for action to help reduce prices. The Opposition called for a 5 cents per litre reduction in the excise on petrol, which currently stands at 38.1 cents per litre. (See note below for an explanation of the strike-throughs). the abolition of the double taxation of petrol by eliminating Goods and Services Tax (GST) on petrol excise. Since the excise is currently 38.1 cents per litre, this would save 3.8 cents per litre. One Victorian Liberal MP, Chris Pearce, went further and called for a 10 cent reduction in petrol excise. The Rudd Government initially claimed that there was nothing more that they could do, but then buckled to the pressure and has proposed the introduction of a national FuelWatch scheme aimed at promoting price transparency at the bowser. The Minister for Competition Policy & Consumer Affairs, Chris Bowen, has indicated that this scheme is expected to save around 2 cents per litre. So, what is going on with petrol prices and what are the merits of these proposals?

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Retail Sales in New South Wales

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Yesterday the Sydney Morning Herald published an article on the latest retail sales numbers for New South Wales that contrasted the sales growth in take-away food and pubs and clubs with the decline in business for cafes, restaurants and fresh food retailers. This is put in the context of with rising mortgage rates and fuel prices, to suggest that consumer behaviour is starting to shift. The data is published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, so I decided to dig a little deeper. Prompted by a comment over on the Junk Charts blog, I’ve used a table enriched with spark-lines rather than the heatmap I used in the inflation post.

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