Monthly Archives: August 2014
A simple question about Walras Law
Inspired by Free Radical's post, I think I have figured out a simpler and clearer way to say what I want to say about Walras' Law. Ask yourself the following question: Q. Assume an economy where there are (say) 7 markets. Suppose 6 of those markets are in equilibrium (with quantity demanded equal to quantity […]
Balancing the Premiers
Apparently, ten out of ten premiers (13 out of 13 if we count the territories) can agree that Canada is suffering from a “fiscal imbalance” between Ottawa and the provinces. At their annual meetings, which are wrapping up in Charlottetown today, the provincial premiers are arguing that since the Federal budget is moving into surplus […]
Tim Hortons
A lot of US econobloggers are talking about the Tim Hortons-Burger King merger. But all they seem to talk about is corporate tax rates. I think they are missing the big picture. The big picture is here: [I can't figure out how to embed that picture in Typepad. That's okay, I did – SG] To […]
Interest rates, asset prices, and the rich
Does anybody here remember 1982? When interest rates went very high, and so asset prices went very low. Just the opposite of today. What were people saying back then? 1. Were they saying: "Central banks are setting high interest rates and making asset prices low, which is bad for the rich, who own all the […]
The ECB cannot move last
I think this diagram helps us understand the Eurozone problem in simple game-theoretic terms:
Second best monetary and fiscal policy and the strategy space
[This post covers too much ground and stretches my brain too far. I'm trying to put Lipsey-Lancaster and game theory together, and apply it to monetary-fiscal. I blame Brad DeLong for making me think about this.] Brad DeLong says: "But as long as Nick Rowe recognizes that fixing situations of depressed activity by simply printing […]
Land vs Helicopters
[This post is not as clear as I want it to be. Sorry.] Most discussions of long run secular stagnation, and short run liquidity traps, ignore land. They shouldn't. If a central bank runs out of other options to increase aggregate demand, it could always use helicopter money. Or it could buy land. Is it […]
Physicians and Workload: A Very Simple International Comparison
The Canadian Medical Association has been having its annual meetings this week in Ottawa and in honor of the event, let me put out another international comparison on physicians using data from the OECD Health Statistics 2013. The first chart (Figure 1) is a basic resource availability measure showing the number of physicians per 1000 […]
Money, prices, and coordination failures
[This is very long, and covers a lot of old ground for me, as well as some new. It was supposed to be a belated reply to Brad DeLong's post. But my thoughts wandered. (By the way, for some reason I never remember being annoyed at Simon Wren-Lewis, even when I disagree with him; but […]
Stewardship and Autonomy
Ontario last week announced the signing of Strategic Mandate Agreements with each of its 44 universities and colleges as part of a move to “drive system-wide objectives articulated by the Ministry’s Differentiation Policy Framework.” Essentially, in a restrained fiscal environment the provincial government prefers to target money for new programs only where they can be […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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