Monthly Archives: October 2011
The Agenda on the Limits to Economics
Last Friday, TVO's show "The Agenda" broadcast an hour-long discussion on the limits of economics, sparked by Dan Ciuriak and John Curtis's working paper "What if everything we know about economic policy is wrong?" The discussion featured University of Western Ontario economist David Laidler, Barnard College's Perry Mehrling, Thorsten Koeppl, a professor of economics at Queen's University, […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2011Q3 GDP growth
The August 2011 GDP numbers are out, so it's time for my quarterly attempt to provide an estimate for quarterly GDP growth a month before Statistics Canada releases its first estimates – the most recent exercise is here. This is done by using simple linear regression model of monthly GDP growth on monthly LFS data […]
Whatever happened to black cat toffee?
Back in the day, name brand chocolate – Coffee Crisp, Mars bars – made up a small percentage of the average trick-or-treat haul. I remember getting candy apples, rockets, tootsie pops, suckers, caramels, "boiled sweets" (hard sugar candy), raisins and the dread black cat toffee. Nothing – in terms of quality or in terms of […]
Paul Krugman and inflation pessimism
Paul Krugman believes (I'm pretty sure) that the IS curve slopes down. Getting the US economy to a higher equilibrium level of output and employment through monetary policy alone means a real interest rate that is lower than it is now. And since the nominal interest rate can't fall any lower, the only way to […]
Negative natural rates of interest and NGDP targets
My colleague and co-blogger Frances Woolley doesn't do macroeconomics and monetary theory. It's not her cup of tea at all. But when I started to write a response to Steve Waldman's very good post on NGDP targeting, I found myself writing about Frances' also very good post on demographics and saving for retirement. Steve: meet […]
Eurozone to issue yuan bonds???
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative is not normally a blog for very short posts. We try to be a bit more analytical. But there's really not much one can say about this idea reported in the Telegraph, other than: this is really stupid. The whole Eurozone problem is that each Eurozone country was issuing bonds in what […]
Visions for Universities
My friend and PhD Thesis advisor Peter George was awarded the David C. Smith Award for Significant Contribution to Scholarship and Policy on Higher Education in Canada at a dinner on October 13th hosted by the Council of Universities. As part of the celebration, Peter George delivered a speech that drew upon his three-term experience […]
Attack of the health care zombies
In his inaugural Economy Lab post, Chris Auld does a superb job of demolishing the idea that a healthy lifestyle substantially decreases demand on the health care system. He calls it the "zombie argument" because: it has been repeatedly shot, stabbed, and poked at with sharp sticks, but it won't just die. People still believe that […]
The Fed’s Dark Age communications strategy
One sentence in Fed vice-chair Janet Yellen's speech caught my eye: "Indeed, I believe that the Federal Reserve qualifies as one of the most transparent central banks in the world." That is total bullshit. The Fed is one of the least transparent central banks in the world. Ironically, in the excellent paragraph immediately following her […]
The Bank of Canada revises down its forecast
Not much to add to what's been said elsewhere, except that I've updated my series of graphs documenting the evolution of the Bank of Canada's forecasts.
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