Author Archives: wciecon
Where has all the research gone?
I would like to write something for Economy Lab on how difficult it has become to find older Government of Canada publications.
Living in a demand-side world
I know what it's like to live in a demand-side world, because I used to live in one. Let me tell you about it. Maybe it's like the world you live in.
How to answer “true, false, uncertain” questions
True, false, uncertain: "Natural gas price controls during the late 1970s hurt producers at the expense of consumers, but did improve economic efficiency." (Source) True, false, uncertain: "Assuming that the Ricardian Equivalence proposition holds in small open economy (SOE), a temporary tax cut will have no effects on the current account." (Source) From first year […]
Two more random arguments for microfoundations
1. Because it helps us understand micro better too. For example, suppose we found that macroeconomic models worked a lot better if we assumed that firms were monopolistically competitive rather than perfectly competitive. Even if you were a microeconomist with no interest in macroeconomics, that tells you something useful. It's one more bit of evidence […]
Is a Constitutional Challenge Public Health Care’s Next Arena?
Many Canadians believe that the Canada Health Act is the bulwark that is supposed to be protecting public health care and that it should ensure comparable levels of coverage across the country. Yet, if one examines per capita provincial government health spending, the evidence shows that there are major differences.
Teaching inflation targeting with ISLM
In intermediate macroeconomics the ISLM model (and the Mundell-Fleming ISLMBP open economy version) is the main workhorse. But we also want to teach how the Bank of Canada (or whatever) targets inflation. This post is about how I use the ISLM to teach inflation targeting. It's a bit clunky, and I haven't got all the […]
Quantitative Time Travellers
The price of gas relative to the price of milk has been trending upwards for the past 40 years:
From gold standard to CPI standard
Inflation targeting is a much better monetary policy than the gold standard. But that's not what this post is about. Is there any fundamental theoretical difference between how monetary policy worked under the gold standard and how monetary policy works today for a modern inflation-targeting central bank? That's what this post is about. If you […]
Trade Shift?
Well, Stephen Harper’s recent statement during a talk at the Woodrow Wilson International Center as reported by the Globe and Mail during his recent visit to the United States that: “We cannot be in a situation where really our one and only energy partner can say no to our energy products” underscores what seems to […]
Asymmetric Redeemability question: if the Fed pegged to the loonie?
One of the things I was a little disappointed about in the recent money and banking controversy was that nobody (IIRC) picked up on my (it's not original to me) point about asymmetric redeemability. The Bank of Montreal promises to redeem its (demand deposit) dollars for Bank of Canada dollars, while the Bank of Canada […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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