Author Archives: wciecon
A libertarian at liberty
Laura Ingalls Wilder left the royalties from the Little House in the Prairie series to her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. Rose had no living children of her own, so she bequeathed the rights to the Little House series to Roger MacBride. One account of why Wilder left everything to MacBride is the adopted grandson theory: MacBride was […]
Interpreting coefficients right: does it matter?
Econometricians spend their lives trying coming up with new and better estimation techniques. Some of the ideas are excellent but impractical ("Just find a suitable instrumental variable"), and some complicate matters for minimal benefit (some argue that using logit or probit rather ordinary least squares estimation falls into this category). So when I stumble across […]
Trill Perpetuities, and dynamic inefficiency under uncertainty
A trill perpetuity is a bond, which promises to pay the owner a one trillionth share of nominal GDP (that's the "trill" bit), every year forever (that's the "perpetuity" bit). Trills, AFAIK, do not exist, though economists have thought about them. Perpetuities do exist (but are rare). Trill perpetuities do not exist. But they are […]
Things I think about and worry about but don’t blog about
I mean macroeconomic things, not just cars and canoeing and stuff. This is another "selection bias in blogging" post. Probably a more important selection bias than the one I talked about in my previous post. If you thought that my blog posts are about all the things in macroeconomics I think are important, you would […]
Strategy space and the theory of monetary policy Two
Industrial Organisation economists have known since 1883 that strategy space matters. To say the same thing another way, Industrial Organisation economists have believed in fairies ever since 1883, when a French mathematician proved the existence of fairies in oligopoly theory. Industrial Organisation economists, at least by stereotype, tend to be very practical down-to-earth people, quite […]
Eliminating milk quotas: a thought experiment
There are three ways to reduce the price of a product. The first is through technological innovation – the reason why the price of computing power and memory storage is now so low. The second is to cut wages, or the price of other inputs. Even though the basic technology of sewing t-shirts has not […]
Strategy space and the theory of monetary policy One
In ECON 1000 we teach that a monopolist picks a point on his demand curve that maximises his profits. We can think of the monopolist as setting a price to hit that point, or we can think of the monopolist as setting a quantity to hit that point; and we teach that it doesn't make […]
Selection bias and disagreement in blogging
Paul Krugman wrote a post about the ECB yesterday. I agree with it about, I don't know, say 90%. Here's where I disagree: 1. Paul and I both want easier monetary policy for the ECB, but he thinks of that as a temporarily higher target inflation rate, and I think it would be better to […]
Modern medicine, warts and all
Warts epitomize the dilemmas of modern medicine. They are pervasive – Verruca Vulgaris is called "the common wart" for a reason. They're not life threatening, but they diminish life quality. They can be treated with the latest high tech laser weaponry – or left to their own devices, as warts not infrequently go away without treatment. […]
Why is JSTOR so difficult (for idiots like me) to use? (Updated X2 with good news)
[Update 1: see the response from Brian Larsen, User Services Manager, JSTOR, in the comment below. I commend them for reading, responding, and for trying to make JSTOR easier to use.] [Update 2: IT WORKS! Brian has done it (for Carleton anyway, and I think he's working on the rest). And I don't even have […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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