Monthly Archives: November 2007
The economics of Scrooge
Stackelberg Follower has a delightful post on Market failure in Christmas, written in the well-established tradition of applying formal economic modeling techniques to a thorny social problem. Here is the setup: A model: Denote the degree to which advertisers push christmas by ‘Push’. This includes seasonal music playing in malls, Santa set up in said […]
Gini coefficients in Canada, the UK and Sweden: 1980-2005
The national statistics agencies of Canada, Sweden and the United Kingdom have annual series for gini coefficients going back to 1980 or so. Although cross-country comparisons of the levels should be taken with a grain of salt, the trends in these three countries are remarkably similar: It is a Well-Known FactTM that inequality has been […]
Recent oil price movements in currencies other than the USD, updated
Oil prices are now approaching USD100. Maybe it’s time to revisit the graph of oil prices in other currencies: In the last four weeks, the CAD has depreciated against the USD, and the yen has appreciated; the net result is that the CAD-yen exchange rate is pretty much where it was on Labour Day. If […]
Gentle reader, you are a genius
At least, according to this page: So far, the only other economics blog that I’ve found that is in this tiny and marginalised elite and distinguished group is Econbrowser. (Update: add the Becker-Posner blog to that list). Not incoincidentally, the typical ranking for a top economics blog is a high school reading level. [h/t: The […]
The CAD appreciation finally passes through to inflation
The long wait for the pass-through appears to be over: according to today’s CPI release, core inflation has gone from 2.5% in June down to 1.8% in September. (The headline CPI number was 2.4%). The only sectors where prices didn’t fall were in the areas least affected by the exchange rate: shelter and services. Although […]
Why would the Bank of Canada reduce interest rates on December 4?
The last time the Bank of Canada announced its target for the overnight rate, it decided to keep its previous level of 4.5%, and it said that that it was planning on keeping that rate for at least the next few months. It’s been a month since then; is there any reason why the Bank […]
Manufacturing provincialism
The CAD has been climbing fast, so it’s to be expected that its altitude would start to affect some people’s decision-making skills. But you’d think that the premiers of Canada’s two largest provinces would keep their heads, wouldn’t you? Well, no. Calling on Stephen Harper to "do something" about the appreciating CAD is an extraordinarily […]
Canada’s tax system is regressive
A while ago, I blogged about a study using data from way back in 1988 that suggested that Canada had a tax system that was essentially flat. Since then, we’ve seen the arrival of the GST and any number of changes to personal income taxes, so an update to that study was high on my […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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