Author Archives: wciecon
America’s Dangerous Debt
The budget turmoil in the United States is certainly attracting a lot of attention and of a kind it is unaccustomed to given its global power status. The International Monetary Fund has just urged the United States to outline credible measures to reduce its budget deficit as well as a plan to reduce its massive […]
Worthwhile Survey Initiative
This will change everything. Please participate in our WCI political poll. Click here to take survey Only one response is allowed per IP address; your IP address is not stored in the poll results (we can't see it). Update: I've fixed the "skipped question" problem. Here is a summary of the results so far: Survey Summary
Tax choices in the OECD
The CBC's vote compass has attracted a certain amount of attention and not a small amount of controversy. I like these sorts of exercises, even if the questions aren't always well-posed. So here are some 'tax compasses'. I'm not going to even try to set up some sort of interactive questionnaire, because everyone's preferred tax […]
Is it moral to vote?
This question should perhaps better be left to Robin Hanson, who understands Aumann's agreement theorem better than me. (Maybe he's already addressed it, but a quick search of his blog didn't find it.) I am almost certainly muddled somewhere. But here goes anyway. Suppose there's an election between two parties. Or a vote between two […]
Why Vote?
I mentioned in an earlier thread that I've been voting for the Greens consistently since 2003 (both at the federal and provincial level). Prior to that, I rarely voted at all because I believed it was irrational. What lead this economist to change his mind?
Why high gasoline prices are good news for Canada
Or at least, not the unremittingly bad news that they would appear to be from stories like this: Gas prices 'sucking energy' out of Canadian households: The long upward march in gas prices since late 2010, which has helped keep Canada's resource-based economy chugging, is also equivalent to a 7% hike on the income tax […]
A cost effective crime fighting agenda
The Conservative Party of Canada is committed to a law-and-order agenda. Strengthened and toughened sentencing is a key part of that agenda. Sentencing reduces crime through "incapacitation". It is hard to rob a bank when you're in prison, so an incarcerated offender is an incapacitated offender. Yet incapacitating potential offenders through incarceration has two key […]
The rise of the public economist
Canadian Business blogger Andrew Potter calls it the economists' election. "This is the first election," he writes, "in which a large number of Canadian economists are making direct, unmediated, real-time interventions into the debates over policy and the various party platforms." The obvious story is that technological change has made it possible for economists to […]
Conspicuous Politics
Today, I walked past a garden with a beautiful display of snowdrops and crocuses – and a Green Party lawn sign. A house with a bicycle locked to the railings at the front of the house – and an NDP lawn sign. A house with a neatly laid out garden – and a Liberal lawn […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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