Monthly Archives: September 2011
Why the Gini?
Stephen Gordon recently posted an excellent analysis of trends in income inequality in Canada and elsewhere. Stephen, like almost all of the other authors cited in his post and the subsequent discussion, measured inequality using the Gini coefficient. The very next day, I saw a paper by Francesca Greselin arguing that the Gini is inferior to […]
Does Canada’s Electoral System Under-Represent Minorities?
It is erroneously believed by some that the original U.S. constitution had a clause decreeing that a black man was "worth" only 60% of a white man. The three-fifths compromise, rather, was a mechanism for determining how slaves (not blacks, though in the 1770s only 8% of the black population were 'free', so there was […]
What’s wrong with New Keynesian macroeconomics — an MM perspective
There are many things right with New Keynesian macroeconomics. It is a very good synthesis of many strands in Monetarist, Keynesian, and New Classical macroeconomics. But this post is not about what's right with New Keynesian macroeconomics. There are also many things wrong with current New Keynesian macroeconomics. New Keynesian macroeconomists are aware of many […]
The Impact of Economics Blogs
I blog, therefore I am. What if I blog about blogging? What kind of impact does blogging have? Blogging is a flexible creative format that can present economic ideas at a fairly high level of analysis but without the formal process and format of a refereed journal article. Moreover, blogs allow for a fairly […]
Can demographics explain why the income shares of high earners have increased?
The increasing concentration of incomes among a small number of high earners has been documented at length here ([1], [2], [3]) and elsewhere. Any sensible response to this development has to be based on at least a partial understanding of how and why this trend began – and we still don't have a theory that […]
The Euro, “less competitive countries”, and the neutrality of money
I'm not a great defender of the Euro. I think it was a mistake. But there's one argument against the Euro that I'm not happy with. It goes something like this: "Some of the Eurozone countries are just permanently less productive than others. The less productive countries just can't compete if they all share a […]
The Excess (constrained) Demand for Money
I noticed something a bit strange about the responses to my last post. For the last couple of years I have been writing lots posts saying (in various different ways) that recessions are always and everywhere a monetary phenomena. That Keynesian models do not make any sense except in a monetary exchange economy (which is […]
On trends in inequality in Canada, the United Kingdom and Sweden
The Conference Board released a study on trends in inequality, so I decided to update the data from this old post. Here's what I found: if you measure inequality using the Gini index, you'd conclude that after increasing during the 1980's, inequality levels had stabilised since 1995.
Net Worth, Wealth Effects and Recessions
According to a report by Bank of Nova Scotia economists Derek Holt and Karen Woods, Canadian businesses have begun to pull back on investment and accumulate inventories which may be a sign that the economy is about to head into another recession. After the surprise second quarter drop in GDP, if there is another drop, […]
A response to Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman has a lot in common with quasi-monetarists like me. [Update: I'm going to re-emphasise this. On reading Paul's post, it is now much clearer to me than it was in the past that there is a helluva lot in common between Paul Krugman and quasi-monetarism. So many economists just don't get the central […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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