Monthly Archives: August 2017
Thinking about Costs and Benefits of Immigration
I find this a useful way to organise my thoughts about the costs and benefits of immigration. It may work for you too. I start out with a neutral benchmark, where immigration has neither costs nor benefits for the original population. Then I think of different ways in which that neutral benchmark could be wrong. […]
Balancing Ontario’s Budget…In 1875
We often long for simpler times and search for them in our not so distant past. As an economist that does public finance and economic history, the public accounts of the past can offer me an interesting diversion. Governments, at any time in history always take in revenues and make payments and the budgets and […]
Upward-sloping Demand curves for Labour and Housing
I have a simple thought-experiment ("model") that helps me think about the relationship between: migration; planning restrictions; wages; and house prices (or rents). Assume all workers are identical, all houses are identical, and it's strictly one worker lives in one house. The government of a small city/state controls both immigration and the number of houses […]
Hysteresis vs Full Recovery by creating a Boom?
Simon Wren-Lewis has an important post. Read it first. If he's right then what looks like hysteresis from the recession is due to deficient Aggregate Demand. But is he right? This post is my attempt to figure it out. I want to start with a very simple model with no hysteresis — where recessions have […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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