Monthly Archives: November 2012
How to fake out a teaching assistant
Odds are, in first or second year university, your exam or esssay will be marked by a teaching assistant. The teaching assistant is probably marking from an answer key or rubric. He or she has a list of things that she is looking for. If you give the TA all of the things that are […]
Precautionary taxation vs tax-smoothing – on paying down the debt
Bob Murphy is arguing with Steve Landsburg over whether the debt/GDP ratio should be (slowly, eventually) reduced. So I have to join in. Plus, (with my Carleton colleague Vivek Dehejia) I actually published a paper once on this very topic (unfortunately not available online) (link here thanks to Keshav Srinivasan). (Just to forestall some comments, […]
Thoughts on Teaching the Coase Theorem
Every year I attempt to teach students the Coase theorem, and devise some new question to test their understanding of it. Every year I fail to communicate Coase's ideas. Here is this year's Coase question (adapted from one by Jesse Bull):
Bond vigilante attack = bursting the bond bubble = target NGDP
The title says it all. There's not much to add. "Bond vigilante attack" is just another name for "bursting the bond bubble". And loosening monetary policy would do that.
We Will Bury You…Eventually?
Few probably recall (I was not even born yet) the November 18, 1956 Western ambassadors reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow where the then Soviet First Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Krushchev supposedly uttered the famous quote: “We will bury you.” The actual line apparently was apparently something to the effect of “Whether […]
Free-riding economists, revisited
In a classic experimental economics paper, Marwell and Ames observed Economists Free Ride, Does Anyone Else?
One of These Countries is Not Like the Others
Given that the Finance Minister is presenting the Federal Fiscal Update today in Fredericton, it is instructive to review some fiscal comparisons right out of the release of the 2012 Federal Fiscal Reference Tables (which in turn used the OECD Economic Outlook May 2012 numbers for the international comparison). Figure 1 plots the ratio of […]
Wikipedia nails it
Wikipedia entries on economics seem to be written mostly by graduate students, eager to share their knowledge with others, and a disproportionate number of Austrian, feminist and other heterodox economists. Sometimes they get it pretty much exactly right, as with this description of the practice of economics:
The inefficiency of monopoly: Remembrance Day edition
A common solution to the falling-off poppy problem I have lost more Remembrance Day poppies than I can count. They just don't stay on. Some people combine patriotism with remembrance, and affix their poppy with a Canadian flag pin. The Canadian Legion, while acknowledging that a poppy attached with a flag pin is better than […]
Waiting for the bond vigilantes
Paul Krugman is right if he is talking about a small attack by the bond vigilantes. It's a good thing, because it increases Aggregate Demand, which is what the US economy needs. But too much of a good thing will be a bad thing. A large attack by the bond vigilantes would be a bad […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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