Monthly Archives: January 2015
Did inflation targeting destroy its own signal?
The Calvo Phillips Curve has a very special property: the subset of firms that change their prices in any period is a perfectly representative sample of all firms. That property makes the Calvo Phillips Curve very easy to use, which is why macro modellers like to use it. But that property stacks the modeller's deck […]
Marrying satisfaction with happiness
Shawn Grover and John Helliwell have just written a paper that claims to say something about marriage and happiness. Just about all the news coverage of this research has featured headlines like "Married People Are Happier People" or "Definitive Proof That Marriage, Especially To Your Best Friend, Makes You Happier." The paper is just one of the latest contributions […]
Comparing Manufacturing Employment Growth: Canada and the USA
According to the employment numbers just released, the United States is doing quite well with the preliminary Bureau of Labour Statistics numbers pointing to the addition of 252,000 jobs in December and an unemployment rate now at 5.6 percent. Meanwhile, Canada exhibited a much weaker performance with Statistics Canada reporting that Canada lost 4,300 jobs […]
Saving Ontario
Here is an entertaining story to ring in the New Year. Apparently, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in an interview in her Queen’s Park office says that Ontario is “ready to shield Canada from the economic tsunami caused by declining oil prices and a sinking dollar.” According to the Premier, Ontario’s manufacturing heartland is gearing up […]
The economics of stuff
Some simple observations: 1. Economies grow when people buy stuff. 2. Over time, people accumulate more and more stuff. 3. People can only handle so much stuff. Sock drawers get full of socks. Cupboards get full of cups. Bookshelves get full of books. 4. It's hard to get rid of stuff. Economic models typically […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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