Monthly Archives: June 2010
How Difficult Will It Be For the Federal Conservatives to Win an Election?
It is a bit of a strange question to ask, but I thought I would follow up on How Difficult Will It Be For the Federal Liberals to Win an Election? by asking the same question from the point of view of the Conservatives. Other than flukes (1958) and the Mulroney elections (1984, 1988) the […]
SpongeBob SquarePants and the Economics of Identity
SpongeBob SquarePants lives in a pineapple under the sea, makes the best burgers in Bikini Bottom, and loves life. Akerlof and Kranton's Economics of Identity explains why SpongeBob is so happy. An identity is a sense of self, "this is who I am". Every one of us has many identities – our gender, nationality, religion, […]
“How the ultra-rich get even richer”
That's the title of my latest column on high-income concentration at Canadian Business. Notwithstanding the title, the article's main point is that we don't know how it's happening.
New Keynesian macroeconomics doesn’t make sense to me any more
WARNING: this post is not quite ready for prime-time. But I can't figure out how to re-write it before I leave to England this evening. And we were arguing about this stuff in comments on my Tinkerbell post, so I'm just going to post it anyway. Old Keynesian macroeconomics makes sense. It might be right, […]
How Difficult Will It Be For the Federal Liberals to Win an Election?
In response to Liberal/NDP merger talk I decided to examine past election data to see how difficult it will be for the Liberals to beat the Conservatives in a future election. The Liberal recipe for success during the 20th century has largely been to absolutely dominate Quebec and try not to get beat up too […]
Tinkerbell in New Keynesian models
This post is not a critique of Paul Krugman's critique of Scott Sumner (though that's what got me thinking along these lines). It's a critique of all of us, especially all of who use New Keynesian models (which includes me). Framing matters. Tinkerbell is real and all-pervasive. She flies in New Keynesian models all the […]
BC bleg: Are its politicians crazy, or just stupid?
BC is several thousand kilometers and three time zones away, so much of what happens there passes below my personal radar. But the HST file is something I've tried to pay attention to, and the news from BC just seems to go from bad to worse. I have a couple of questions, and I'm hoping […]
Opportunity Costs – Their Use and Misuse
Opportunity cost is one of the most important concepts in microeconomics. A solid understanding of opportunity costs both allows us to make better decisions and to better understand the decisions made by others. However, the concept is often used erroneously, as it was earlier this week by an Ontario politician.
Open mic night
Today it's your turn – what are you thinking about? What are you reading? Are there topics you'd like us to write more about? Less about? To get you started – this morning I was reading about Spillonomics – forecasting unlikely events. And I'm trying hard to think about everything except unfolding disasters.
Run, don’t walk, up the down escalator
If you find yourself going down the down escalator, and suddenly realise you want to go back up, you don't delay, and you don't walk back up. You turn around immediately, and you run as fast as you can till you get to the top. Over a year ago, Mark Thoma introduced his icy hill […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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