Monthly Archives: June 2013
The lunch problem
When I first joined Carleton, just three out of thirty professors in the economics department were female. Then one retired, one moved to Montreal, and I was the only female professor around on a regular basis. For the most part, I didn't mind. If I was the kind of person who objected to being in […]
Did finance really matter?
If we used cows as money, we would probably teach our students courses on "Money and Milk Yields". If an outbreak of foot and mouth disease had caused a recession, macroeconomists would feel they needed to pay much more attention to veterinarians. Milk yields matter. Foot and mouth disease is a problem. But these are […]
Fiscal Death Watchlist
I found Nick Rowe’s post Is Japan Already Dead quite inspiring so I decided to dig up the most current IMF World Economic Outlook Database for numbers on net debt to GDP ratios. Japan – which may already be dead – has a net debt to GDP ratio in 2012 of 134 percent. An estimate […]
Men, women, and law school tuition
Law school is a human capital investment, worth making (roughly speaking) if the benefits are higher than the costs. Male lawyers earn, on average, more than female lawyers (e.g. here). But that does not mean they get a higher return on their legal education. The pay-off to going to law school is the increase in […]
Is Japan already dead?
No, I don't think it is. But I think "Is Japan already dead?" is a much better question to ask than "Will the increased interest rates from economic recovery kill Japan?" This is just a supplement to three posts: by me; by Noah Smith; and by Paul Krugman. (This also harks back to Livio's post […]
Why don’t schools teach typing?
My niece wants to take a typing class. She watches her mother's hands whiz across the keyboard, rattling off 80 or 90 words per minute. She wants to be able to write quickly and effortlessly too. But her school doesn't teach typing. The question is: why not? Learning how to touch-type is a classic example […]
A theory of the price level is a theory of inflation, but not vice versa
Because of calculus. Suppose you start with a theory of the price level P(t). Differentiate that theory with respect to time and you get a theory of the inflation rate Pdot(t). If P(t) jumps at some time, which it might in some cases, inflation is infinite at those times, but that's interesting to know. Suppose […]
If Canada used American racial categories…
The US Census Bureau counts people by race: white, black, Asian, and so on. Statistics Canada counts people by "visible minority status" – we don't like to mention words like "race" or "white" up here. The other day I found myself wondering – if Canada used American racial categories, how would the demographics of the […]
The usefulness of AS-AD, an example
Here is a model I saw recently. Except I am the one who has used the AS-AD framework to illustrate that model. The AD curve is drawn under the assumption that the central bank holds the nominal interest rate fixed. According to that model: If wages are sticky (so we are on the SRAS) a […]
On the percentage of Canada covered by water (totally off topic)
Sorry. This is about maths and stats, with a possible application to physical geography. Nothing to do with economics (well, it might have an application to business cycles, but I'm not ready to go there yet). Maybe the geographers have already figured this one out long ago (I couldn't find it on Google, but I […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments