Monthly Archives: March 2018
It’s time to blunt dentists’ incentives to use general anesthetics
I recently consulted a dentist about getting a tooth extracted. The dentist recommended getting it done under general anesthetic. I responded, "I've had four wisdom tooth extracted under local anesthetic. I've given birth to two children without medication. I think I can handle it." "Ah, but some patients say dental pain is worse than child […]
Could you pass a 1950s Econ 1000 exam?
Principles of economics final exams set out, implicitly, the core of the discipline. Their questions are designed to test understanding of fundamental economics concepts; the ideas that are the foundation of economic analysis. So when I came across Clifford L. James's Principles of Economics (first published in 1934; ninth edition in 1956), complete with final […]
Is the war over higher education spreading north?
In the US, higher education has become a partisan issue. While Democrats view colleges and universities as having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country, a majority of Republicans now view colleges and universities as a negative influence (see this Pew survey). There is also a partisan divide in the US […]
Why don’t more economics students get SSHRC doctoral fellowships?
In 2017*, just seven economics PhD students were awarded SSHRC doctoral fellowships, according to data provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to the Canadian Economics Association. Put another way, only 1.6 percent of the 430 new SSHRC doctoral fellowships awarded that year went to students studying economics. The immediate cause of […]
Another Picture That Will Define Ontario Politics for the Next Four Years
Ontario is getting a Throne Speech this week and a budget next week and these events will set the stage for the June election. In her recent post, Frances drew attention to the province's public finances via the public sector wage bill and the public-private sector wage differential and that cutting the public sector wage […]
Monetary and Fiscal Federalism, Debt, Canada, and the Eurozone.
A government that undertakes a commitment to target 2% CPI inflation does not, strictly speaking, "borrow in its own currency". Its bonds are an indirect promise to pay, via transversality transitivity (damn!), a specified quantity of CPI baskets of goods and services. In much the same way that bonds under the gold standard were an […]
Conservatism on Canadian campuses
In the US, liberal bias in academia has long been a subject of concern, especially to those on the right of the political spectrum. Now here in Canada, pundits and politicians are increasingly bothered by a perceived lack of openness to conservative views on campus (see, for example, here, here or here). Yet Canada is not the […]
The picture that will define Ontario politics for the next four years
In Ontario, public sector employees earn more than private sector employees. Many workers in the private sector earn the minimum wage, or only slightly above minimum wage. The peak of the public sector earnings distribution is much higher, at twenty-something dollars per hour, and there are a good number of public sector workers earning $40 […]
The gendered impact of eliminating mandatory retirement
On March 6th, the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario released a report on the sustainability of university expenditures. One of the issues highlighted in the report was financial cost of eliminating standard retirement at age 65. As Simona Chiose reported in the Globe, Ontario professors "who are 66 and older have an average salary […]
Making guns obsolete
The US supposedly has a unique gun culture. Yet, for an economist, culture is a lousy explanation. We seek the origins of culture; the economic and social forces promoting and sustaining it. Hunting, frontier living, and war can explain how the US gun culture got started, but not its persistence. Gun-friendly rural areas are losing […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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