Monthly Archives: August 2012
Inequality rules
Last March, Bell Canada Enterprise circulated its 2012 executive compensation policy: we use three key elements of compensation with an aggregate target value positioned at the 60th percentile of what is paid in the competitive market for similar positions. A few weeks later, Human Resources minister Diane Finley announced "a more efficient and responsive temporary foreign […]
Dutch Capital Theory
Very few economists are aware of Dutch Capital Theory (DCT to us insiders). It was invented by my ancestor Nick van Rowe, over a century ago, but has been suppressed by a conspiracy of silence and ignorance ever since. Think of this as a teaching post.
Money is always and everywhere a hot potato
And the Law of Reflux is always and everywhere wrong. Unless the central bank decides to make it true. (The Law of Reflux says an excess supply of money will always revert to the issuing banks). This post is too long. It was a bit off the top of my head, and I'm too busy […]
The very short run
Most macroeconomists make a distinction between the short run (sticky prices) and the long run (flexible prices). I want to talk about the very short run. We mostly ignore the very short run, and I don't think we should. Because the very short run probably isn't really that short. Old Keynesians used to talk about […]
The New Gold Rush
This post was written by HEC-Montréal professor Simon van Norden With changes to environmental review processes, I get the feeling that the Harper government is keen to speed up development of the Oilsands. That’s not particularly odd. Oil prices tripled and Canada is sitting on the second largest reserves in the world; the Canadian dollar […]
Elinor Ostrom, you were turtley right
Mother turtle laying eggs on banks of Rideau River Elinor Ostrom, Nobel-prize winning political economist, died on June 12, 2012. That same day, a mother turtle pulled her way out of the Rideau River, and made her nest on the river bank. A turtle's idea of a good nesting place is somewhere with soft, loose […]
Economic Forecasting: Is Google Trends the Future?
Google Trends is a quick and popular way to assess the importance of ideas, events and trends by looking at the results of people’s web searches. In fact, as is well known, it has been used to study flu activity based on searches for flu related terms. And, right here on WCI, it has been […]
Supertanker and canoe Phillips Curves, and inflation targeting
This post is an attempt to give some intuition for my previous post. There are two differences between a supertanker and a canoe: 1. Position. You can easily pick up a canoe and make it jump a nautical mile north or south of its present position; while a supertanker really wants to stay where it […]
Boy versus Teacher: A Lesson in Mastery
"Read each sentence or poem. Mark an X on the word or words that need to be capitalized. Then write the sentence correctly on another sheet of paper." "Writing it again is a waste of time."
The rejection letter I’m too politically correct to send
Dear Professor Faraway, Thank you for your submission to Review of Economic Theory of Consumer Habits (RETCH). Like most papers we receive from developing country academics, your submission is not suitable for publication in our journal.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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