Author Archives: wciecon
Paul Krugman and inflation pessimism
Paul Krugman believes (I'm pretty sure) that the IS curve slopes down. Getting the US economy to a higher equilibrium level of output and employment through monetary policy alone means a real interest rate that is lower than it is now. And since the nominal interest rate can't fall any lower, the only way to […]
Negative natural rates of interest and NGDP targets
My colleague and co-blogger Frances Woolley doesn't do macroeconomics and monetary theory. It's not her cup of tea at all. But when I started to write a response to Steve Waldman's very good post on NGDP targeting, I found myself writing about Frances' also very good post on demographics and saving for retirement. Steve: meet […]
Eurozone to issue yuan bonds???
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative is not normally a blog for very short posts. We try to be a bit more analytical. But there's really not much one can say about this idea reported in the Telegraph, other than: this is really stupid. The whole Eurozone problem is that each Eurozone country was issuing bonds in what […]
Visions for Universities
My friend and PhD Thesis advisor Peter George was awarded the David C. Smith Award for Significant Contribution to Scholarship and Policy on Higher Education in Canada at a dinner on October 13th hosted by the Council of Universities. As part of the celebration, Peter George delivered a speech that drew upon his three-term experience […]
Attack of the health care zombies
In his inaugural Economy Lab post, Chris Auld does a superb job of demolishing the idea that a healthy lifestyle substantially decreases demand on the health care system. He calls it the "zombie argument" because: it has been repeatedly shot, stabbed, and poked at with sharp sticks, but it won't just die. People still believe that […]
The Fed’s Dark Age communications strategy
One sentence in Fed vice-chair Janet Yellen's speech caught my eye: "Indeed, I believe that the Federal Reserve qualifies as one of the most transparent central banks in the world." That is total bullshit. The Fed is one of the least transparent central banks in the world. Ironically, in the excellent paragraph immediately following her […]
The Bank of Canada revises down its forecast
Not much to add to what's been said elsewhere, except that I've updated my series of graphs documenting the evolution of the Bank of Canada's forecasts.
Revisiting the Sustainability of Post-Secondary Education
I decided to try and dig a little deeper on the issue of the sustainability of post-secondary education spending in Canada by looking at the numbers in real per capita terms and by province. As I mentioned in my earlier post, while fiscal sustainability is a term generally used in the health care policy debate, […]
All Chuck Norris really needs is stamina
This is my fourth and last Chuck Norris post. I'm getting bored with the metaphor too. But there is something many people missed in my last posts. It's important. Andy Harless explains it in his post. I'm going to explain it my way. Suppose Chuck Norris keeps on fighting for an NGDP level path target […]
How many Canadians are losing and finding jobs?
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that as far as I could make out from available data, rates of job creation returned to pre-recession levels more than a year ago. This time, I'm going to try to get a handle on the gross flows on the other side of the market – that is, in […]
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