Monthly Archives: June 2015
Are apples non-rival?
Suppose we had an apple replicating machine, that could replicate apples costlessly and instantly. How would we go about answering the question: "Are apples a non-rival good?". 1. We could have a lovely philosophical argument about whether the original apple and the copy are two different apples or just two different manifestations of the same […]
Are ideas really non-rival?
I was writing a simple teaching post, on ideas and increasing returns to scale, in micro and macro. I wrote down "Ideas are non-rival". Then I thought I had better explain what I meant by that. Then I thought about professors, who do research (thinking up new ideas), and teaching (communicating existing ideas to other […]
Mathiness and Growth theory
Paul Romer says: "No model can have a competitive equilibrium with price-taking behavior and partially excludable nonrival goods. If you are not an economist, this would be a model in which someone who has a monopoly on an idea can charge for its use, but somehow is unable to influence the price that users have […]
Great Recession Versus Great Depression for Canada
With all the doom and gloom with respect to slowing Canadian economic growth and talk of secular stagnation, it is useful to look at a comparison between the last few years in Canada with what transpired during the Great Depression. References are often made that the 2008-09 Recession and its aftermath is a period comparable […]
Another tiny money/macro model for microeconomists
With monetary exchange, and both recessions and booms. This one is based on Nick Edmond's model. You can think of it as a cross between my previous model and what Paul Krugman calls "The World's Smallest Macro Model" (pdf). This model really does work in a 3D Edgeworth Box. (I messed it up a bit […]
I need a 3D symmetric Edgeworth box to explain money/macro
The new world's simplest money/macro model? OK microeconomists, here's some money/macro for you. I want a very simple model. The model will be extremely unrealistic. It won't look anything like the real world. But it will help me explain one very important fact about the real world. It will be a model of a pure […]
Back propagation induction does not work under inflation targeting
Suppose you lived in a world where, whenever the price level fell/rose by 1%, the central bank responded by decreasing/increasing the base money stock by the same 1%. A world like that would not have a long-run Omega point, from which some present equilibrium can be pinned down by back propagation induction. That's the sort […]
What Happened to Historical Statistics of Canada?
For whatever reason, Statistics Canada has changed the nature of the access to its web version of Historical Statistics of Canada. Until recently, the electronic version of this classic work of data (with paper editions published in 1965 and 1983) covering Canada from 1867 to the mid 1970s provided the tables of the assorted sections […]
Econometric estimates of fiscal policy multipliers
New Keynesian macroeconomics says that a (temporary) increase in government spending will cause an increase in the natural real interest rate. And unless the central bank increases the actual real interest rate by an equal amount, the result will be an increase in Aggregate Demand, which will cause an increase in real output and/or inflation. […]
Fact Check: Bias at the CEA?
This was written by Trevor Tombe of the University of Calgary. In a recent Financial Post opinion piece by Phillip Cross (entitled “Discounting Business Knowledge” HERE), he finds the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Economics Association guilty of bias. Allow me to quote him at length: Analysing the 64-page CEA agenda shows a not very […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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