Monthly Archives: January 2013
Toilets, Governments and Incentives
In my morning newspaper, I came across a hardware store flyer advertising a great new innovation – toilet with pump! Essentially, along with your regular toilet, an additional water storage tank and pump is installed that allows you to store recycled water used from your sink, tub, or shower and then use it when you […]
What’s wrong with drinking in public?
In Canada, outside of Quebec, it is illegal to drink alcohol, or even have an open container of alcohol, in a public place. Public drinking is banned throughout the US also. A number of other countries do not have such laws – in the UK, one can buy a bottle of beer in a pub […]
What is going on with the Bank of Canada’s balance sheet?
From zerohedge: Mark Carney Leaves Canada With 'Stealth QE' Rising At Fastest Pace Since 2009: As Mark Carney steps aside from his role at the Bank of Canada to undertake all manner of easy money in the UK, we thought a reflection on the 'stealth' QE that he has been engaged with, very much under […]
Freedom, fried?
The message is clever, inspirational….
The problem of poor whites
South Africa's system of apartheid was designed, not only to protect the privileges of the affluent, but to improve the desperate situation of "poor whites." Apartheid reserved decently paid skilled and semi-skilled manual jobs for them, making it possible for almost all whites to achieve a good life – a house, a car, steady employment, […]
Copy/paste/re-write; student essays as collages
This is not about economics. Maybe it's about teaching. Maybe it's about the internet. I only have anecdata, and it is compromised by sample selection bias. I don't have any theory, and I don't have a proposed policy.
A plug for optimal currency areas
Pictured on the right is my current collection of plugs and chargers – North American-type plug for (locked) Canadian cell phone, UK type plug for UK phone, charger with Europlug for South African phone (not ideal, but the phone was only $15), plus a UK and South African adaptor thrown in for artistic effect. […]
Take that, Steve Saideman
My colleague, Steve Saideman, has a thing about milk in bags. On Saideman's Semi-Spew he claims that, as compared to gallon milk jugs, they're an "inferior technology." They're not even good for the environment because "bags in which milk may be delivered have no other purpose. A gallon jug, on the other hand, has a vast array […]
Two extreme fiscal/monetary worlds
I want to imagine two extreme worlds, at opposite ends of the spectrum of possibilities. In the first world (the "fiscal" world), all financial liabilities of the government are non-monetary liabilities, "bonds", that cannot be used as media of exchange. People use something else for money. Maybe gold, or maybe money issued by commercial banks. […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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