Monthly Archives: December 2012
Darwin = Malthus + Sebright? Diffusion of technical change.
Just throwing out some random ideas, on subjects I know little or nothing about, that are only vaguely related, hoping someone better than me might pick some up and run with them properly. Read at your own risk.
Measuring Universities: Once More Unto the Breach
Making change sometimes involves an elaborate public discourse and preparation of affected stakeholders and in Ontario the discourse is towards getting people in the public sector to do more with less. The latest target was drawn to my attention by Alex Usher’s Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) morning bulletin, which featured the preliminary report by […]
The Shopping Cart Puzzle, or Intermediate Micro takes on Behavioural Economics
Today's typical grocery store shopping cart is much larger today the shopping carts of yesteryear. The question is: why? A behavioural economist would observe that people buy more when shopping carts are larger. For example, an AER article by Wansink, Just and Payne notes: ….consumption can also be unknowingly influenced by environmental cues—benchmarks or reference […]
Cantillon effects and non-SUPER-neutrality = does fiscal policy matter?
Scott Sumner and Bill Woolsey have been fighting valiantly against the Austrians. The fight is about "Cantillon effects" — non-neutralities of money that are supposed to arise not from the increase in the money supply itself but from where exactly that new money enters the economy. Sometimes you get a clearer answer to a question […]
As the World Turns
Several posts ago, I presented some numbers by Angus Maddison on the evolution of global GDP output shares over the period 1500 to 2001 which showed that Asia’s share of world GDP declined from 1500 to about the mid 20th century but has since been rising. I decided to try and do a bit of […]
Focal Points and the Short Run Phillips Curve; NGDPLPT beats PLPT
Suppose every firm gets surprising news: after having been flat for years, the central bank will raise Nominal GDP by 10% next period, and hold NGDP constant thereafter. How will firms respond? The Calvo Phillips Curve says that 90% of firms will hold their prices fixed, because the Calvo fairy won't give them permission to […]
Egalitarian airlines
Jules Dupuit gave the classic account of the indignities of second class travel, and the economics behind them: It is not because of the few thousand francs which would have to be spent to put a roof over the third-class carriage or to upholster the third-class seats that some company or other has open carriages […]
Resource Revenue Retention: New Twists on an Old Idea?
In a post on iPolitics, author and journalist Madelaine Drohan discusses the move by the PQ government in Quebec to embrace the Generations Fund – a sovereign wealth fund created by the Liberal government of Jean Charest in 2006. The original plan was to invest water power and mining royalties into a fund whose income […]
A post for Steve Keen
I hesitated a lot before writing this. How to write it? Should I write it at all? Then I thought: "What would Arnold do?". I will probably fail, but I'm going to try anyway.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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