Monthly Archives: June 2015
The Bank of Canada’s “stitch in time”
Steve Poloz is good at economics, but not always so good at finding the best metaphor. Greg Quinn says "Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said his “controversial” decision to cut interest rates in January could be compared to life-saving surgery for the economy and any resulting increase in household debt should be viewed as […]
Seigniorage transfers and runs on common currencies
Two identical countries A and B share a common (paper) currency C. The demand for currency is 5% of annual (Nominal) GDP. Suppose B decides to quit the currency union and print its own currency. There are two different ways it could do this: 1. Convert and destroy. The people in B convert their C […]
Bank walks and options
Why did it takes so long? Currency and deposits are imperfect substitutes. Currency is more convenient for some things, and deposits are more convenient for other things, so many people hold both. If a banking system is working normally, deposits include the option to convert them into currency at a fixed exchange rate (par). (And […]
Fiscal policy and indifference about the size of government
Suppose I were totally indifferent about the size of government. Because I thought that the government was always equally good (or equally bad) at spending money as private households and firms. And not just at the margin, but everywhere. Never better, never worse, but always exactly the same. Whether G is 1% of GDP, or […]
The Historical Statistics of Canada Are Back!
If you recall, several posts ago I lamented that the downloadable csv files that used to be part of archived web edition of Historical Statistics of Canada seemed to have disappeared or were not working. I am delighted to say that the files are back.
Mark Sadowski’s correlations deserve a response
They are just simple correlations, but a sample of 34 (split into two groups) beats a sample of the one country the economist just happens to live in. Correlations of data are themselves data, and it is our job to try to interpret (or explain) the data. This is how I (tentatively) interpret those correlations: […]
Are Technology and Learning joint inputs?
[More musings. I started writing this post arguing that they are joint inputs. Now I'm not so sure. So I changed the title into a question.] We need both land and labour to produce wheat, but land and labour are not "joint inputs", because we can combine them in variable proportions. The marginal product of […]
AK/Solow/Smith/Schumpeterian growth
More random musings, mostly to try to get my own head straight on some questions. (I should steal Robert Waldmann's idea of calling them "stochastic thoughts".) And probably not very original. But sometimes it's easier to try to reinvent the wheel than walk to the library and read all the books on "wheels"; and experiential […]
A New Central Bank Blog
The Bank of England has just launched its own staff blog: Bank Underground. The Managing Editor is John Lewis and the blog is where the staff can air their views as part of the Bank of England becoming more open to the outside world.
Another rant about Statistics Canada’s Attention Deficit Disorder
I've done this before, but I've had a very bad day and I need to vent. I've started work on a forecasting project for the Canadian data, focusing on the short- and medium-term outlook. The first task is to see what sort of data are available, and once again, the frustrating answer is 'not near […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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