Monthly Archives: March 2014
Two first year multipliers: their truth, beauty, and usefulness
Alone again or, just me and the money multiplier, against the world of trendy sophisticates who have put aside such childish things. It brings out the reactionary contrarian in me. And the world needs more reactionary contrarians, to help provide negative feedback against the faddish bubble multiplier of popular theory. There are two multipliers we […]
Police, Crime and the Great Canadian Crime Drop
It would appear fiscal restraint has finally caught up with police services across the country. The recent release of Police Resources in Canada, 2013 by Statistics Canada documents a decline in police strength after nearly a decade of increases as well as a slowdown in per capita spending. The crime rate, however continues to fall.
There can be an excess supply of commercial bank money
Commercial banks are typically beta banks, and central banks are typically alpha banks. Beta banks promise to convert their money into the money of alpha banks at a fixed exchange rate. Alpha banks make no such promise the other way. It's asymmetric redeemability. This means there cannot be an excess supply of beta money in […]
Liquidity pile-ups on the Wicksellian roundabout
I'm trying to model something, and failing miserably. So I'm going to try to articulate my vision, hoping for inspiration. Imagine a large number of cars forever circling around a very large roundabout. Initially they are all going the same speed, and are evenly spaced. What happens if one car slows down temporarily? (I saw […]
Alpha banks, beta banks, fixed exchange rates, market shares, and the money multiplier
Forget money and banking for a minute. Let's think about international macroeconomics. Just suppose the US Fed, for reasons unknown, pegged the exchange rate of the US dollar to the Canadian dollar. The Fed makes a promise to ensure the US dollar will always be directly or indirectly convertible into Canadian dollars at par. The […]
Why do beginner econometricians get worked up about the wrong things?
People make elementary errors when they run a regression for the first time. They inadvertently drop large numbers of observations by including a variable, such as spouse's hours of work, which is missing for over half their sample. They include every single observation in their data set, even when it makes no sense to do […]
Resources, Revenues and Alberta Premiers: The Oil Must Flow!
In Ancient Rome, a key imperial duty was to maintain the flow of grain and gladiatorial entertainment to the masses of Rome. Woe to the Emperor if the flow of grain was interrupted and the entertainment fell in quality. The Empire’s mantra was that the grain must flow! For Alberta premiers, charged with the guardianship […]
Two LM curves
Sometimes we borrow money from the bank because we plan to spend more than we expect to get in income. And sometimes we borrow money from the bank because our stock of money is too small relative to our flows of planned spending and expected income. Here is a rough sketch of a simple model […]
Discriminating custom essay services
The most fascinating part of custom essay writing websites are the price sheets. The market is international, and – judging from the number of such sites – highly competitive. For an undergraduate essay with a 5 to 6 day deadline, typical prices are in the range of $16 per page, $16.76 per page, $18.99 per page (for premium […]
The sense in which the stock of money is “supply-determined”
Consider three positions: 1. The stock of money is determined by the demand for money, and not by the supply of money. 2. The stock of money is determined both by the demand for money and by the supply of money. 3. The stock of money is determined by the supply of money, and not […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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