Monthly Archives: April 2017
Statistics Canada’s historical housing cost data is wrong
In the early 1960s, Canadian economic historian Marvin McInnis started digging through the Dominion Bureau of Statistics archives, looking for city-level information on rental prices. While there, he discovered something strange and disturbing: A prominent theme of my career has been to reveal anomalies in what has been put forward as evidence. One instance is known only to me. […]
Milk is mind-bogglingly cheap.
The Canadian Cook Book was first published in 1923. My copy is the twentieth edition, published in 1949. It dates from the heyday of home economics, a time when scientific principles were being applied to domestic life. Recipes are mixed in with nutritional information, guidance on the finer points of etiquette, and what we could […]
Should professors tell students exactly what they expect?
Imagine, for a moment, that students acquire valuable human capital during their time at university. Imagine that the grades on a student's transcript reflect his or her level of human capital. Imagine that, every term, a professor uses examinations, term papers, and other assignments, to measure how much human capital each student has acquired over the […]
A Very Brief History of Federal Cash Transfers: Canada 1867 to 2017
This is a post in celebration of Canada’s 150th and similar in time span to my previous one on housing supply and dwelling starts. Canada is a federation and a key feature of its operation is a system of intergovernmental transfers between its fiscal tiers. Indeed, transfers and regional equity are enshrined in Section 36 […]
High Wages encourage Innovation?
High wages increase the benefits of an innovation that increases labour productivity. The higher the wage, the bigger the benefits of saving an hour of labour to produce the same quantity of goods. But if that innovation itself requires labour to think up the new idea, test it, and implement it, then high wages increase […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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