Monthly Archives: March 2017
L’affaire Potter
You are all, I think, familiar with the details of L'Affaire Potter, so I need not enumerate them here. If you aren't already familiar with this story, you probably don't care what I have to say about it, so you can skip the rest of this post. But as a Quebec-based academic with a weekly […]
Old and New Keynesian Multipliers: Cross-Section and Time-Series
Suppose you had an economy where half the agents are "Hand-To-Mouth" and have a Marginal Propensity to Consume of one (Ct=Yt), and the other half are "Autonomous" and have a Marginal Propensity to Consume of zero (Ct=At where At is exogenous with respect to their current income). If the two types of agents initially have […]
Real Interest on Reserves
A central bank issues currency and wants to target the price of apples in terms of that currency. So it opens an apple window, and posts a sign promising to buy or sell unlimited quantities of apples at $1 each. Done. Arbitrage ensures that the market price of apples in the economy is always $1 […]
We Are Adding Less to Housing Supply
Housing prices particularly in places like Toronto and Vancouver are still a big issue and what is driving them is the subject of debate. There is Josh Gordon’s recent policy paper, which places the main emphasis on demand side factors and there is the recent story raising alarm on Toronto’s “housing bubble”. There are of […]
Federal Budgetary Comparisons: Canada and the United States
It is federal government budget season in both Canada and the United States and I thought it might be useful to provide a few visual comparisons on federal government finance for the two countries. While the expenditure responsibilities and composition of the two federal governments as well as the relationships and responsibilities with lower tier […]
Econoblogging – still a Worthwhile Canadian Initiative?
This Friday I will be joining colleagues in international affairs, journalism, public policy and political science to talk about "Academics in the Media Landscape: The Role of Scholar-Columnist-Bloggers". The panel is part of Carleton's Visions for Canada, 2042 conference, which explores "the ways innovative collaboration among researchers and the community may be the most effective response to […]
Long Run Growth and the end of The End of (Monetary Policy) History
Suppose everyone believes that we have reached The End of History, as far as monetary policy is concerned. The new inflation-targeting regime adopted by central banks has finally solved the age-old problem of the business cycle. There will be no more booms and busts. Maybe not yet solved perfectly, but the broad outlines of the […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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