Monthly Archives: July 2017
Overselling faded dreams?
The April, 2017, issue of Science has a paper by Chetty, Grusky, Hell, Hendren, Manduca, and Narang on "The Fading American Dream" (ungated here). The paper documents falling income mobility. In particular, Chetty et al claim that, "the fraction of children earning more than their parents fell from 92% in the 1940 birth cohort to […]
Where did all the immigrants go? A fascinating puzzle with a mundane solution.
There are two ways of finding out how many immigrants there are in Canada. One is through administrative data, that is, by using landing records (the forms filled in when new immigrants arrive in Canada) to track immigrants. Another through survey data: to carry out a survey of a selected sample of the Canadian population, […]
Monetary Policy for a central bank with no balance sheet
How a central bank can do things with words. Imagine a central bank with no assets and no liabilities. It does not issue money. It does not buy or sell anything. It does not regulate the commercial banks. The only thing it controls is one word in the dictionary. Every morning it edits the dictionary, […]
Add dentists to Millennials’ list of victims
Diamonds. Napkins. Marriage. Relationships. Fashion. All are being killed by Millennials. Now it's the dental industry's turn. Millennials don't visit the dentist – at least not at the rates that their sweet and adorable younger siblings do, or at the rate of their responsible and sensible parents. Now some Millennial reading this might start whining […]
Project Link update: Labour Force Survey, 1953-2017
I've updated and expanded the data archived on Project Link, my attempt to take the fragments of data published by Statistics Canada and piece them together into a coherent whole. In my post introducing Project Link, I made note of a chart I came across while putting together the headline data from the Labour […]
Understanding Softwood Lumber: Another View
As we move into the latest iteration of the ongoing softwood lumber dispute with the United States, I thought it might be useful to look at some data to see if any additional insight can be gained. The conventional wisdom on the story is that the disagreements have been over the way the two countries […]
Never mind the flatness, feel the length (of the observed Phillips Curve)
Sorry. It suddenly came to me this morning: a simple (and now blindingly obvious) way to reconcile an apparent contradiction in my own thoughts. As a lot of people in different countries have noticed, the observed Phillips Curve now looks very flat. Certainly a lot flatter than it did in the past. And I've been […]
Monopoly/monopsony power and hungriness for sales/purchases
This is actually about the minimum wage debate. And I'm more asking you a question than giving you my answer. Bear with me for a minute. You are a seller. You sell a good for money. You have some degree of monopoly power over the good you sell. You face a downward-sloping demand curve, you […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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