Monthly Archives: June 2014
The CWEN lunch: an idea whose time has past?
The Canadian Economics Association meetings take the same format every year: sessions start at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning and end at noon on Sunday. The Innis Lecture is Friday evening and the Purvis lunch is Saturday afternoon. From time to time a bold and innovative President-elect will try a new experiment, like I think it was […]
Repeat after me: people cannot and do not “spend” money
John Maynard Keynes famously wrote that: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." A modern example of that dictum, relevant to the economy, policy, and markets, is the widespread view that people can "spend" their money, as if money represented a […]
What’s in a Name?
We all know that the word “economics” comes from the Greek “oikonomia” which refers to the thrifty management of household affairs. By extension, the origin of the term “economy” is closely related to the same term as it is from the Latin “oeconomia”, which is again from the same Greek “oikonomia”. From all this, it […]
House prices and inflation targeting
"Should house prices be included in the CPI?" is not a good question to ask. The best answer to that question is another question: "Why do you want to know?" Or, "It depends; what are you planning to use the CPI for?" Instead, it would be better to ask the question in a different way […]
All-you-can-eat sushi restaurants should not exist. Why do they?
All-you-can-eat restaurants should not exist. People with large appetites crowd into all-you-can-eat establishments. These greedy customers eat vast amounts, driving up the restaurants' costs. Restaurants have no choice but to increase prices, but this turns off people with small appetites. Eventually the only people who eat at the restaurant are hulking athletes, and the restaurant […]
Regression toward the mean
I am feeling too stupid to write a proper blog post (Spring doldrums). So I thought I would take the opportunity to make lemonade and write a short post about my own stupidity. Every educated person should understand at least the very basics of Darwin. This is something very basic that I did not understand […]
Yes, academic administrators do have to alienate people
My colleague Stephen Saideman just tweeted a post by Bill Ayres on The Myth of Academic Incompetence. In it, Bill argues: there is no necessary correlation between having to make sometimes difficult trade-off decisions and alienating people. What matters is how the decisions are made and what the relationship is between those making those decisions and those being affected by […]
Ontario’s Economic Future?
Well, the election is over and I must admit I was not that surprised the Liberals formed the government but I am surprised at the fact it is a majority government. There are now numerous economic challenges facing the province and suspect after the fun of campaigning from the left, the Liberals may eventually be […]
Bank runs, keynesian multipliers, monetarist cold potatoes
They are all the same. Do bank runs cause recessions, or do recessions cause bank runs? Both. Neither. They are the same thing. (This post isn't as clear as I want it to be, because my mind isn't as clear as I want it to be, so read at your own risk.) I was making […]
Fiscal Policy Shocks
Well, here is a new contribution to the debate over the effect of fiscal policy shocks from the journal of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The authors Paweł Borys, Piotr Ciżkowicz and Andrzej Rzońca are from the Warsaw School of Economics and look at the impact of fiscal policy shocks on EU new member states. […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments