Monthly Archives: March 2016
What is Employment Insurance For?
If Canada's Employment Insurance program was designed solely to insure workers against the loss of employment, it would look very different. For one thing, the premiums that employees and employers contribute would go towards paying benefits to people who have lost their jobs. But in 2013/14 – the most recent year for which I can find data – […]
How Vancouver Escaped the Freeway Curse
In the 1950s, Vancouver began to feel the pain of traffic congestion. The travel time contour map below, taken from the 1958 study Freeways With Rapid Transit, shows how bad it was. In rush hour it took a 15 minutes or less to get from corner of Georgia and Granville to anywhere in the dark green area – […]
Economics can’t be encapsulated into knowledge pills. And that matters for research funding.
Antibiotics – when they work – are miraculous. A patient does not have to understand what antibiotics are, or why antibiotics are effective. All that is required is for someone somewhere in the world to create an effective antibiotic and put it into a pill. Then it can be shipped to someone with a bacterial infection, and the patient […]
Conceptually costing Basic Income
Micro public finance is not my area, so take this post with a big heap of salt. But: Q. How much would it cost to implement a Basic Income, where everyone gets (say) $10,000 per year? The normal way to approach that question is to multiply $10,000 by the population, then subtract the cost of […]
Federal Budget 2016: Quick Comment
Well it is Budget Day in Canada! Today’s federal budget is designed to address Canada’s uncertain economy by running large deficits to stimulate spending. Interestingly enough, the spending is somewhat more skewed towards people rather than things (infrastructure) which probably makes it a long term calculated pre-election strategy.
Chartalism and stock-flow consistency
[A post for Alex Douglas.] Here are two closely related questions, about Chartalism and the relation between stocks and flows of money. 1. How can intrinsically worthless bits of paper be a valuable asset that gets used as a medium of exchange? One answer is that the government forces us to pay taxes with those […]
Stag Hunt and The Money Problem
If I were any good at writing book reviews, this post would tell you all about Morgan Ricks' new book "The Money Problem", and would explain why I think it's a very good book. [Disclaimer: I was paid to fly down to Nashville for a couple of days to help Morgan with his first draft.] […]
It’s easier to have a sensible fiscal rule with an NGDP level-path target
It's a simple point, perhaps an obvious point, that only needs a short blog post, but I think it's worth making. The Brits seem to be arguing about whether they should have some sort of rule (or charter) for fiscal policy, and if so, what it should look like. I am a bit skeptical, because […]
New Keynesian macro when all output is consumer durables [DRAFT]
Warning: math-challenged economist at play. I want to see if I can sucker any readers into checking my math and doing the rest of the math for me. Do not read this post unless you think that might be fun. Update: Keshav has solved the math. Now we are trying to understand what it means. […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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