Author Archives: wciecon
Should every child in Ontario have the right to attend a Catholic school?
Every child in Canada has the right to attend a free, government funded public school. But some schools are better than others. And the range of choices available to children varies widely – and arbitrarily – across the country.
Five years of Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
The first WCI post was written five years ago today. Since then, the number of bloggers posting here has increased to four and more than 1,000 other posts have been published, along with some 17,000 comments. I take a certain satisfaction in these numbers, so I'm going to indulge in a meta-post below the fold.
When academic publishing goes wrong: the case of missing women and Hepatitis B
This is a story about how something that turns out to be wrong can be published in a top journal, and what happens next. The Freakonomics team tell good stories, so I'll let them begin. In 2005, they wrote an article in Slate magazine lavishly praising the work of a young economist called Emily Oster.
Productivity and real wages revisited
Before the recession hit, the overriding concern for the Canadian macroeconomy was our poor record of productivity growth. As the recovery progresses, we can expect this discussion to move back to the forefront of policy debates. When we talk about the importance of productivity, the point is invariably made that increasing output per worker is […]
Stag Hunt and macroeconomics
A coordination failure is when rational individual behaviour leads to a bad outcome. Some other outcome would be preferred by all. Keynesians especially emphasise coordination failures, though nearly all macroeconomists say that coordination failures sometimes happen, and say the US economy is in one right now. That makes us optimists. Maybe this isn't the best […]
What Should Economists Be Teaching Less Of?
Over the past week, we have had a number of conversations about the deficiencies of economics education at the ECON 1000, undergraduate and Ph.D. level. Depending on the school, a Ph.D. student may never encounter anything on behavioural economics or experimental economics or economic analysis of law. There are all kinds of things I would love […]
How has the crisis changed the teaching of economics?
A must read: The Economist asks a number of prominent economists the following: How have the financial crisis and recession affected the way economics is taught? How should economic instruction change? For the 'how should it change' question, my views are closest to that of Harold James. As far as my own introductory course – […]
P-data, Q-data, and L-data
Economists have got lots of P-data and Q-data, and we pay a lot of attention to it. I think we don't have much L-data, except anecdotal, and we don't pay much attention to the hard L-data we do have. P-data is data on the prices at which goods are traded. Q-data is data on the […]
Another rant about the Globe and Mail’s coverage of economics
One of the featured articles in today’s Globe and Mail is on “Economists and their fairy tale world of prognostication.” I don’t mind people taking pot shots at the economics profession – I do it myself. But at least try to get the shot remotely on target.
Clusters and the New Economics of Competition
In response to Prof. Gordon's Some implications of thinking of trade as a form of technology, Paul Friesen wrote: Actually, I think manufacturing is special in a way most economists fail to appreciate adequately. Manufacturing clusters. If you do manufacturing, you create an environment in which more manufacturing is likely to develop. Clusters and clustering […]
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