Two Years of 🍋Asymmetric Information
Two Years of 🍋Asymmetric Information
NZAE's blog continued to grow in Year 2, doubling subscriptions and nearly doubling views. Thank you, contributors and readers, for a great second year of A↬I.
Asymmetric Information grew substantially in its second year. With many thanks to our contributors and supporters, here’s some statistics on the past year.
113,000 visits (up from 60,000 in Year One)
We’ve had 113,000 visits to 67 posts in the past twelve months. That’s slightly fewer posts than the 73 in the first year, but with many more views than the first year’s 60,000. While traffic has continued to build, a single post in December 2023 (see below) saw extraordinary engagement and triggered more subscriptions and views in the following months.
Total subscriptions have doubled in the past year, with 1,284 of you now subscribed (up from 634 a year ago). 84% of subscribers are in New Zealand, 6% in Australia and 4% in the US — a similar geographical distribution to Year One.
Twenty-eight authors contributed to posts in the past year (up from 17 in Year One). Many thanks to all of you.
Boxing Day 2023 was one to remember
Dave’s Boxing Day post Is a rail link between North & South Islands really "essential"? generated an extraordinary 14,900 views and 174 new subscribers. (You can see the big jump in the graph above!) That post can be credited with the consistently higher views for all subsequent posts.
Other popular posts from the past 12 months include:
Understanding the trends in persistent disadvantage by Jo Smith
A Cook Strait ferry solution by David Greig
Wither rail freight in NZ? by Bryan Crump & Dave
The transition to EVs by Ian Duncan
The Productivity Commission and a legacy of unwelcome advice by Judy Kavanagh & Nik Green
NZ's Green Investment Bank is underperforming by John Young
Environment and economics: A marriage of (in)convenience? by Simon Upton
And Pricing and fairness on the Milford Track, The many prices of carbon and RIP NZ Productivity Commission 2011–23 by Dave
These posts were viewed more than 2000 times, some of them more than 3000 times. All are worthy of a read, should you have missed them the first time around.
Would you be willing to support AI financially?
AI is run by volunteers, and its authors receive no payment. But it does have some costs — these are borne by NZAE members through their membership fees, and through generous sponsorship from Survey Design and Analysis Services (the Australasian distributors of Stata), and from NZIER’s Public Good Programme.
A great way to support the A↬I blog is to join the NZAE (or renew your membership if it has lapsed). We don’t currently have an option for non-members to directly financially support us, but we are considering it. If you would be willing to pay for an “AI Supporter” subscription at, say, NZ$5/month or NZ$50/year (whether or not you’re an NZAE member), please use this button to indicate your support. (You will not be charged unless and until we decide to start receiving payments.)
Either way, we will continue to publish all our great content online and send it to all subscribers for free — no paywalls.
Follow the NZAE on LinkedIn
NZAE is expanding its online presence on LinkedIn. Please follow us here.
Acknowledgements
Thanks, as always, to our contributing authors, and to those we draw upon to edit and provide comments on drafts.
But especial thanks to you, our readers. If you like A↬I, or a specific post, please share with others to build our readership network.
Feed back … and contribute
As always, we’d appreciate feedback. What’s is going well? What’s not working for you? Who would you like to see writing, and on what topics? Please email us, or make a comment on this post.
And feel free to submit or propose a post! A rough outline is sufficient – we’re happy to work with you to knock it into shape.
Our favourite (i.e. most flattering) reader comment from Year 2:
I’ve been a keen reader of your Asymmetric Information columns … who needs a Productivity Commission when you can get the quality analysis via NZAE!
Coming up in Year 3
Here’s a sneak peak into the editors’ inbox: You can expect posts on the (continuing) rail ferry saga, environmental economics, congestion pricing, the distributional consequences of infrastructure pricing policies, our regular 2B RED and Blogwatch columns, and more!
By Olivia Wills & Dave Heatley
Further reading:
Congratulations Dave and Olivia! and to all the people who contributed posts, and to those who graciously offered late night peer review and fact checking. As you point out AI is run by volunteers and the authors receive no payment. Why do they do it? Because they care about quality analysis and well-informed debate on some of the most pressing issues facing New Zealand. "Who needs a Productivity Commission when you can get the quality analysis via NZAE?" said one reader. If we are to take that comment seriously, then AI's value is more than $10m over the last two years. Thank you, and please don't stop.