Monthly Archives: January 2016
Reforming Government: Do We Need a Human Investment Super-Ministry?
From time to time, I like to ruminate on what could be done to better develop or improve the delivery of government services especially given the tendency of government ministries to overlap when providing services. This gets a further push when I am teaching public finance – as I am this term. There is of […]
Tiered negative interest rates and required reserves
Tiered negative interest rates are just a mirror-image of required reserves with positive interest rates. Think back to the olden days. Interest rates were always positive, except for currency that paid 0% interest, and banks had minimum required reserves. So for a 10% required reserve ratio, for every $100 of demand deposits banks the banks […]
Under-investment in Public Clubs
I don't know if I'm re-inventing the wheel. I don't normally do this sort of micro, or any micro. Talking about "Public Club Investment goods" will sound oxymoronic to an economist. But the investment goods I'm talking about are a bit of both. They look like club goods from one angle, and look like public […]
Temporary vs permanent fiscal policy in a small open inflation targeting economy
Just a short note as a backgrounder for the current Canadian debate about fiscal policy. This is totally unoriginal boring textbook stuff (at least I hope it is, anyway). Prerequisite: intermediate macro (or special permission to skip to the results if you promise not to ask me daft questions about where they came from). The […]
Boy racers in Neo-Fisherian Equilibrium with upper and lower bounds
This is not just about monetary policy; this is about how we use the concept of "equilibrium". But it is also about Narayana Kocherlakota's recent note and working paper. There is a road from Ottawa to Toronto. There are 100 boy racers in Ottawa. The race starts at midnight. Each boy racer has a utility […]
Interest Rate Pegs with a Finite Horizon Omega Point
[I was trying to write a post on Narayana Kocherlakota's fascinating but difficult paper and post on closely-related topics, but I'm not quite ready yet, and I got distracted.] What I used to think. This is what I used to think about what would happen if the central bank tried to peg the nominal interest […]
The simple macroeconomics of monopsony power
If you loosen monetary policy in a standard macro model, you get an increase in output and employment in the short run, and an increase in the price level in the long run. That is not what happens if you assume monopsony power. The same loosening of monetary policy will cause a decrease of output […]
Ontario Universities: Is Change Coming?
Well Happy New Year! The start of the New Year is as good a time as any for reflecting on the state of things – including universities. As 2015 dragged to a close, a number of items came out which of course did not generate too much of a stir given the run up to […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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