Author Archives: wciecon
Some Simple Basic Money, for Finance People
Finance people are good people. Economics needs finance people. Some of my best friends are finance people. But (you heard that "but" coming), finance people (though there are of course honourable exceptions) just don't seem to get money. I can hear the reply now: "Yeah, and money people don't get finance either!". And I think […]
Can sex triumph over patriarchy?
The way women and men spend their time has changed profoundly over the past century. Women in the developed and, to some extent, the developing world are spending much less time in unpaid household work, especially in tasks like cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and much more time in paid work. Men are doing a little bit less […]
What’s wrong with Airbnb?
Airbnb undermines the distinction between short-term, "hotel", accommodation and and long-term, "apartment" accommodation. Some people seem to figure this is a bad thing. New York State legislators, for example, have passed legislation imposing heavy fines on anyone listing their entire apartment on Airbnb or a similar service. But what – if anything – is wrong with what Airbnb […]
Central Bank Coordination as BS; Targets vs Instruments.
Imagine you are at an international policy conference. Someone says "Central Banks need to coordinate their monetary policies better". You nod your head wisely in agreement, along with everyone else. Because you know that what one central bank does affects not just its own economy but the economies of other central banks, so there are […]
Canada Pension Plan Memo
To: Generation X, Generation Y and Millennials From: The Baby Boomers Re: Pension Savings Date: June 21, 2016 It has come to our attention that you are not saving sufficiently for your retirement. This does not surprise us. We haven't saved sufficiently for our retirement either. Some of us have made enough money in the housing market […]
Wage Norm Function vs Stock Price Belief Function
Roger Farmer always has done interesting and different stuff. We need economists like that. But it's risky of course. What I'm trying to do here is articulate something that makes me uneasy about his recent line of macro theorising. Like his simple model here with Konstantin Platanov (pdf). Consider a simple model with three goods: […]
The Irrelevance of Universal Basic Income
The Modigliani Miller Theorem says that a firm's financing policy is irrelevant. It's wrong of course, but it's a good place to start thinking about firms' financing policies. It would be presumptuous to talk about an Irrelevance "Theorem" for Basic Income. The math is trivial, and the economics is obvious. (And I hope this is […]
The Law of Reflux vs Helicopter Money
Let me start out with an extreme (and very silly) assumption, just so I can explain something simply. Assume that the demand for currency does not depend on the price level, nor on real income, nor on interest rates, nor on anything. It's just fixed. Every individual wants to hold exactly $100 in currency, no […]
On Olivier Blanchard on ISLM and Teaching Intermediate Macro. And my despair.
I read Olivier Blanchard on how to change the ISLM model in response to the recent recession to teach Intermediate Macro better. And I despaired. Not because he says anything daft, but precisely because what he says seems so sensible a set of minor modifications. But it's a set of minor modifications that takes us […]
Bargaining power and the incidence of taxes on high earners in Canada
Today I'm presenting a paper at the meetings of the Canadian Economics Association: "Bargaining power and the incidence of taxes on high earners in Canada." The bottom line is that once you take into account the fact that high earners have bargaining power – that's why they are high earners in the first place! – […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments