Monthly Archives: April 2011
Is it moral to vote?
This question should perhaps better be left to Robin Hanson, who understands Aumann's agreement theorem better than me. (Maybe he's already addressed it, but a quick search of his blog didn't find it.) I am almost certainly muddled somewhere. But here goes anyway. Suppose there's an election between two parties. Or a vote between two […]
Why Vote?
I mentioned in an earlier thread that I've been voting for the Greens consistently since 2003 (both at the federal and provincial level). Prior to that, I rarely voted at all because I believed it was irrational. What lead this economist to change his mind?
Why high gasoline prices are good news for Canada
Or at least, not the unremittingly bad news that they would appear to be from stories like this: Gas prices 'sucking energy' out of Canadian households: The long upward march in gas prices since late 2010, which has helped keep Canada's resource-based economy chugging, is also equivalent to a 7% hike on the income tax […]
A cost effective crime fighting agenda
The Conservative Party of Canada is committed to a law-and-order agenda. Strengthened and toughened sentencing is a key part of that agenda. Sentencing reduces crime through "incapacitation". It is hard to rob a bank when you're in prison, so an incarcerated offender is an incapacitated offender. Yet incapacitating potential offenders through incarceration has two key […]
The rise of the public economist
Canadian Business blogger Andrew Potter calls it the economists' election. "This is the first election," he writes, "in which a large number of Canadian economists are making direct, unmediated, real-time interventions into the debates over policy and the various party platforms." The obvious story is that technological change has made it possible for economists to […]
Conspicuous Politics
Today, I walked past a garden with a beautiful display of snowdrops and crocuses – and a Green Party lawn sign. A house with a bicycle locked to the railings at the front of the house – and an NDP lawn sign. A house with a neatly laid out garden – and a Liberal lawn […]
Real wages, the recession that was, and the recession that wasn’t
After the tech bubble burst, the United States went into recession, but Canada did not. This isn't to say that we escaped entirely unscathed; there were some nervous moments, and the Bank of Canada saw fit to reduce its overnight rate target from 5.75% to 2.25% between January and November 2001. But if you look […]
Politics, Business Loans and Market Failure
A story that is getting a lot of play in London, Ontario: Diamond Aircraft has raised the stakes in its fight to secure a $35 million Canadian government loan that would allow it to restart the D-Jet programme. It promises to develop unmanned and special mission aircraft for the North American market at its London, […]
Excess supply, excess demand, and search
Take a simple supply and demand model of a competitive market. Look at the blue lines in my picture below:
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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