Author Archives: wciecon
The New Gold Rush
This post was written by HEC-Montréal professor Simon van Norden With changes to environmental review processes, I get the feeling that the Harper government is keen to speed up development of the Oilsands. That’s not particularly odd. Oil prices tripled and Canada is sitting on the second largest reserves in the world; the Canadian dollar […]
Elinor Ostrom, you were turtley right
Mother turtle laying eggs on banks of Rideau River Elinor Ostrom, Nobel-prize winning political economist, died on June 12, 2012. That same day, a mother turtle pulled her way out of the Rideau River, and made her nest on the river bank. A turtle's idea of a good nesting place is somewhere with soft, loose […]
Economic Forecasting: Is Google Trends the Future?
Google Trends is a quick and popular way to assess the importance of ideas, events and trends by looking at the results of people’s web searches. In fact, as is well known, it has been used to study flu activity based on searches for flu related terms. And, right here on WCI, it has been […]
Supertanker and canoe Phillips Curves, and inflation targeting
This post is an attempt to give some intuition for my previous post. There are two differences between a supertanker and a canoe: 1. Position. You can easily pick up a canoe and make it jump a nautical mile north or south of its present position; while a supertanker really wants to stay where it […]
Boy versus Teacher: A Lesson in Mastery
"Read each sentence or poem. Mark an X on the word or words that need to be capitalized. Then write the sentence correctly on another sheet of paper." "Writing it again is a waste of time."
The rejection letter I’m too politically correct to send
Dear Professor Faraway, Thank you for your submission to Review of Economic Theory of Consumer Habits (RETCH). Like most papers we receive from developing country academics, your submission is not suitable for publication in our journal.
Calvo vs Mankiw/Reis, and IT vs PLPT/NGDPLPT
An economy is humming along very nicely in full long run equilibrium. All real variables are at their natural rates. Actual and expected inflation are both equal to the 2% inflation target. As the years go by, the price level goes: 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, and everybody expects it to continue 100, 102, 104, […]
Joint outputs
There's something a bit weird about the way we normally do economics. Or maybe it's just the examples we normally use. My mind isn't quite clear on it yet. So I'm writing this blog post. We usually talk about multiple inputs producing one output. Labour, land, and capital are inputs used to produce apples. Three […]
Why is Ontario’s Government Being So Mean to Its Teachers?
Being in Toronto for the Rimini Conference in Economics and Finance 2012 and standing in the shadow of Queen’s Park has led me to contemplate why the Ontario government is suddenly being so mean to its teachers. After years of Dalton McGuinty as the education premier with an expansion of education funding and programs, the […]
Reswitching and the term structure of interest rates
Treat this as a rough draft, on a topic I haven't thought much about for over three decades. The punch line is at the end. I may be wrong (of course). A farmer considers whether to switch to a new technique for growing food. Compared to the old technique, the new technique would produce less […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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