Monthly Archives: September 2015
Dumb questions about predictability of stock market returns
Something I always wondered about, but was too scared to ask. Noah Smith's (quite reasonable) post nudges me into asking it. Even if everyone is perfectly rational, where is it written that stock market returns cannot be predictable? The stock market rate of return is a rate of interest. Where is it written that changes in […]
Is it ethical to sell complimentary copies of textbooks?
Faculty Books Recycling is a company that takes the complimentary copies of textbooks that publishers send professors, resells those comp copies to students, and makes a profit on the transaction. Faculty Books does everything possible to make professors feel that selling – or giving away – comp copies is an ethical thing to do. In […]
Time to raise the gas tax?
A much higher gasoline tax may currently be a political conversation stopper but fortunately it doesn’t stop conversation in economic policy. Enter Joel Wood’s paper about higher gasoline taxes for Toronto which appears in the latest issue of Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques (which I am promoting here as the new editor). Joel also has […]
Spare Parts, and The Use of Knowledge in Society
Random musings from a small sample on a subject about which I know little. Where did I read that military amateurs talk strategy, but military professionals talk logistics? Or that if they did a re-make of The Graduate, the one word career advice would be changed from "plastics" to "logistics"?
The (near) inevitability, and who and when, of Helicopter Money
Helicopter Money is (almost) inevitable. The only questions are: who does it; and when do they do it. And we can't (easily) tell when it gets spent, and what it gets spent on, because money is fungible and we don't observe counterfactual conditionals. Let's make some ballpark-correct assumptions. Assume currency pays 0% interest, and the […]
Another Update: Twitter and the Federal Election
Well, the federal election Leader's debate on Thursday evening was in the end a rather disappointing affair. It was essentially a series of thrusts, parries and spins on taxation, housing, immigration, energy, etc…but left out in the entire debate was any fundamental recognition of what I think is a major issue facing the future prosperity […]
Lumbering Along in the Finding Data Process
Well, all I was trying to do was introduce a set of lecture slides on the nineteenth century timber trade with a simple overview of the Canadian logging industry's employment in the twentieth century. Well, three hours later it has proven to be a more frustrating exercise than I would have expected but here is […]
Two simple games, for game theorists and Neo-Fisherites
I'm hoping some game theorists will chime in here; it doesn't matter if you don't get macro. I need your help, and want your thoughts on my intuitions: Not all Nash equilibria are created equal. Game A. There are n identical players who move simultaneously. Player i chooses Si to minimise a loss function Li […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments