Monthly Archives: November 2010
Bygones are not bygones
As always, Steve Randy Waldman has produced a post (and a follow-up) based on some deep and original thought, that provokes more thought. This is the thought it provoked in me. The issue is not technocrats vs moralists. The issue is consequentialist morality vs non-consequentialist morality. In economics, bygones are forever bygones. But bygones are […]
More evidence on minimum wages, employment and poverty
A year ago, I brought attention to a Canadian Public Policy article on poverty and the minimum wage in Ontario. A notable finding of the study was that the overlap between those who earn minimum wage and those who are in poverty was surprisingly small, small enough to conclude – as I did – that […]
Bad Irish banks and the Tragedy of the Commons
This analogy can't be original. But I don't remember hearing it before (though that doesn't mean much). I was reading Morgan Kelly (H/T Tyler Cowen) on Irish banks. And I was also thinking about my next lecture in ECON1000, on common resources. Then it struck me. They are the same. Banks are a common pool […]
Remembering prisoners of war
For those of us who have not known war, the words of soldiers can help us understand what Remembrance Day is about. Richard Radford is one such soldier. When war broke out in 1939, he left his studies at Cambridge and joined the British army. Captured in Libya in 1942, he spent the remaining war […]
What Policies Should a Canadian Economists Party Promote?
Anyone who has seen my Twitter feed this week has seen that I've grown quite frustrated with Canadian politics lately, with the fact that all of the parties took identical (bad) positions on the Potash decision being a particular annoyance. During the past two elections I have given the maximum legal amount to candidates I […]
Excess supply under monopolistic competition
Like Peter Dorman, I used to suffer terribly from cognitive dissonance. The theory of perfect competition says that, in equilibrium, firms will be selling exactly the amount of the good they want to sell. But my lying eyes kept telling me that most firms, most of the time, really wanted to sell more than they […]
Daylight Savings Time and the non-neutrality of money
I've heard stories about people who set their watches 10 minutes fast, so they won't be late for meetings. It's hard to understand how it could work. Do they forget they set their watches 10 minutes fast? Because if they remember, they should be able to figure out they've got an extra 10 minutes, so […]
Don’t forget Tobin’s q, Mr Bernanke!
It bugs me when people forget Tobin’s q. It’s not as though James Tobin was some sort of wild-eyed fringe monetarist. He was a very mainstream Keynesian economist. Ben Bernanke missed an opportunity to invoke the effect of stock prices on Tobin’s q and hence on investment as part of his explanation of why loosening […]
Another view of the sluggish US labour market
My latest post at the Globe and Mail's Economy Lab talks about the distinction between the net changes in employment reported by the Labour Force Survey and the gross flows in and out of employment. In preparation for that post, I looked up the data from the US Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) […]
What (I think) Paul Krugman was saying
Paul Krugman is a very good communicator. I try to emulate him. But I think he blew it on this post. Everybody has an off-day. No big deal. And it wasn't a simple thing to talk about anyway. This is what I think he was saying. This is my attempt to say it more clearly.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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