Author Archives: wciecon
Wicksteed, stocks and flows
Flows are very very small relative to stocks. Each of us demands a flow of air to breathe, but since the flow demand is very very small relative to the stock supply of air, air is a free good. OK, that analogy is not perfect, so let me build a little "model".
The Big Three Are Still Big
Employment growth in Canada has been particularly robust in the west and nowhere is this more evident than when examining recent employment growth amongst Canada’s CMAs.
Taxing the rich: “Part of this complete breakfast”
The 'starve the beast' strategy works like this: Cut taxes. Observe that cutting taxes has produced a government deficit. Cut spending to reduce the deficit. This idea is apparently American in origin, but the US never has quite managed to get the hang of it; they keep getting bogged down at Step 2. The federal […]
How OECD governments generate tax revenues
I did a post last year documenting the choices OECD countries have made when it comes to tax rates – you might want to take a look at it before continuing. I'll wait here. Okay, welcome back. Given the recent attention ([1],[2],[3]) given to the link between tax rates and tax revenues, this post is […]
Short vs long-run natural rates of interest
Just a quickie, because I'm (supposed to be) grading exams. I want to suggest a small change in Paul Krugman's two recent posts (here and here). One that would narrow the gap between his way of thinking and (say) Scott Sumner's. Desired saving and desired investment depend on a lot of things. One of the […]
The impact of tax cuts on government revenues
An average person, asked to explain the impact of cutting taxes, might well reason: I have represented this argument in flow chart form to give it a spurious air of logical coherence. Yet any flow chart is only as good as the reasoning that underlies it. In this case, that reasoning is seriously incomplete.
Provincial Finances: An Estimate of “Tax Prices”
My previous post dealt with differences in provincial health spending and how on a per capita basis some provinces were substantially above the provincial average while others were not. One of the factors behind any government spending at the provincial level is own source revenue capacity so in light of some of the comments asking […]
A survey about rubrics
I use rubrics sometimes, and I'm curious to know if other people do as well, and how they feel about them, so here is a survey about rubrics: Rubric Survey I've put a couple of demographic questions on towards the end, but please feel free to skip them. Update: preliminary results over the fold.
An erratum on US employment flows during the recession
In my most recent post, I did some eyeball econometrics and missed something. It turns out that Canadian and US employment flows during the recession were not quite as dissimilar as I had thought. (Thanks to Dan Kervick in the comments for catching it.)
Flows in and out of employment during the recession
These are the slides I prepared for this conference a few weeks ago in Ottawa, in which I tried to get a handle on the gross flows in and out of employment during the recession, and how it compared to the US experience. It's actually the extended version of those slides; I ended up hacking […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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