Some links that have caught my eye this week:
With the focus on the economic crisis in Europe, the beginning of a demographic crisis has slipped under the radar as birth rates plummet, from the Economist.
Alex Dunnin analyses the winners and losers from the Productivity Commission’s recommendations on Mysuper defaults.
Andrew Leigh (MP for Fraser, and former econoblogger extraordinaire) takes issue with Amazon’s pricing and availability policies for Australians on the kindle (particularly compared with those from the US). Actually I think it is at least as much a publisher issue as it is Amazon, but availability in particular for Australians is a bit ridiculous. I was in the ludicrous position of having to buy an Australian book
Continuing on pricing and availability issues, apparently Orbitz is steering Mac users to more expensive hotels than PC users. There is no evidence that they are also charging them extra (as they are likely to have a different demand curve) but other online sellers may be.
And finally, for the actuaries, an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about the changing causes of death over time in the US – pneumonia isn’t nearly as scary as it used to be, and there is a lot of argument about how much credit doctors and the medical system should take for some of the reductions in various diseases, notably tuberculosis and heart disease.