Author Archives: wciecon
Asset Management
My brother thinks of himself as a farmer, which he is. But I think of him as an asset manager. He has chosen to hold his assets in land, tractors, ploughs; and that's him, driving his tractor, pulling his plough over his land, fixing the tractor, fixing the plough, managing his assets. He earns his […]
“This new priesthood”
A larger and larger proportion of the general income of the nation is every year expended upon medical treatment; each decade show a quite disproportionate growth of the classes of the population which earn a livelihood by medical services. The grip of the doctor and the chemist grows continually stronger.
Probability Theory Question of the Day
A fun question based on something one of my wife's doctors told me. It turns out the information I received from the doctor was likely incorrect, but the question the information is too good not to use, so I'm just going to pretend it is legit. Here goes:
A Strong Dollar?
American economic policy debate has recently taken turns familiar to Canadians – health care sustainability, debts and deficits, and most recently, the value of the dollar.
Why is there HST on used furniture?
The harmonized sales tax is a value added tax. At each stage of production, the government collects taxes on the value added at that stage. Suppose, for example, a carpenter buys $10,000 worth of wood, makes it into furniture, and sells the furniture for $15,000. At a 12% tax rate, the carpenter pays $1,200 HST […]
Should economists be licensed?
In the US, as in most other OECD countries, unionization rates have been falling for decades. Yet this decline has been counter-balanced by a rise in professional licensing. This picture, taken from Kleiner and Krueger (ht Thomas Lemieux), says it all:
Cities, Capital Cities and Economic Performance
It is the conventional wisdom that urban centers with their concentrations of human and physical capital and their dense social networks are engines of growth. One exception to this is can be the case where a dominant urban center by virtue of its institutional monopoly on a country or region’s economic life is able to […]
How not to evaluate immigration policy
The Fraser Institute has released a study on immigration policy, but there's not much point in telling you its conclusions: the questions they ask are not worth answering.
Why it’s hard to profit from northern asparagus
Life explodes in springtime: green grass, flowers, blossoms. Asparagus, strawberries, rhubarb. Fiddleheads. These seasonal crops all thrive in northern climates. So why is it hard to grow them profitably? There are boring, obvious explanations: labour costs, the high Canadian dollar, and so on. This post explores another reason for asparagus unprofitability. Canadian asparagus is ready […]
As the Border turns: Cross-Border Shopping Revisited
According to a report in the May 11th edition of the Globe and Mail, the U.S. government is pressing the Canadian federal government to loosen the rules so that fewer Canadians have to stop and pay duties as they return from a trip to the United States: “The personal exemption issue has been formally raised […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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