Monthly Archives: July 2011
How to find a topic for an economics research essay
Calculus. Years of macro theory. Micro theory. Econometrics. Study the lecture notes, practice old exams, give the prof what he or she wants. It works. Until the day the prof says "Come up with an original research topic." Panic. "But no one's ever taught me how to be original."
Personal Information, Privacy and Social Programs
I think this is a fairly obvious point, so I am a little surprised I have not seen it anywhere else. The raison d'être for eliminating the mandatory long-form census was privacy concerns. As Tony Clement put it: "Do you believe the government should be asking you what time you leave for work in the morning?" […]
Do Keynesians believe their own models?
I ask this as a quasi-Keynesian myself. I'm not (merely) trying to score points. [Update 2. Paul Krugman weighs in. Like Brad DeLong, and Scott Sumner (in comments), he questions my assumption that the central bank can keep the interest rate fixed, without buying all the outstanding bonds.] Take the standard ISLM model straight off […]
Bulgarian snapshots: An economist on holiday
It's been 20 years since the Soviet Union collapsed, taking the Bulgarian economy with it. Twenty years of transition and rebuilding. Bulgaria has (mostly) abandoned communism, (mostly) embraced capitalism and, in 2007, joined the European Union. All of which makes it a great place for an economist's holiday…
Taylor Rules and the Bank of Canada’s Monetary Policy Report
This morning I've been in email conversations with several economists who do not understand, or disagree with, something in the Bank of Canada's latest Monetary Policy Report (pdf). Specifically, Technical Box 2. These include some very good macroeconomists. I think I do understand it. And I agree with the Bank of Canada. So I am […]
Health Outcomes & Health Financing: An Example
I finally got around to looking at the OECD Health Data release for 2011 and as is my habit, I spend some time looking at the overview reports and charts as well as playing around with some of the data. The first chart provided by the OECD that I want to draw your attention to […]
Why does stuff take so long to happen?
For example, the Eurozone crisis. A couple of decades back, I noticed that things often seemed to happen the way economists thought they would happen, but that they always seemed to take about ten times longer to happen than you would have thought they would. We go from one equilibrium to another equilibrium in a […]
Taxation and other forms of sacrifice
The most minimal form of government is a night watchman state: a government that provides law and order, and lets markets take care of the rest. But are people willing to pay the taxes and make the sacrifices required to support even this most rudimentary level of public services?
The peanut theory of recessions
I've got three targets in this post: economists who say that recessions are caused by real wages being too high; economists who say that recessions are caused by real interest rates being too high; and economists who say that recessions can't be caused by an excess demand for money, because we can always go to […]
An upward-sloping IS curve
Brad DeLong's post on John Cochrane's upward-sloping IS curve triggered this post. But this is not about John Cochrane. It's about why tight monetary policy may cause real interest rates to fall, if monetary policy is expected to stay tight for long enough. The story of an upward-sloping IS curve I'm putting forward here isn't […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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