Author Archives: wciecon
An ode to my home town
This video even made the news. I dissolve into helpless laughter every time I watch it: these kids are the 21st century equivalent of Stephen Leacock.
2% of the population owns 50% of a very, very poor proxy for economic welfare
From a study that has generated some headlines: The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth according to a path-breaking study released today by the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University (UNU-WIDER). The most comprehensive study of personal wealth ever undertaken […]
There’s a sucker born every Christmas shopping season
The electric BBQ marshmallow toaster:
The #1 reason to fear a hard landing in the US: There are no cushions
A US recession seems inevitable now. Unfortunately for those of us who would be negatively affected by this development, US policy-makers have, in their wisdom, stripped themselves of the means to attenuate its effects. Monetary policy: The Fed didn’t stop raising interest rates in August because it thought that inflation was under control; it did […]
Canada’s Q3 GDP release: Not pretty, and likely to get uglier
We’ve had a run of decent numbers recently: employment and wage growth doing okay, and the current account surplus improved last quarter. But the Q3 GDP numbers don’t look good at all. It’s not that the quarterly growth rate itself – 1.7%, a bit shy of the 2% forecasters had been expecting – was so […]
Low productivity growth is a problem. Subsidising R&D isn’t the solution
One of the ideas floating around in the wake of the federal govt’s economic update is the notion that more should be done to promote research and development in Canada. The usual way of promoting this project is to play up the link between R&D, technical progress and productivity: if the payoff from subsidising R&D […]
How to present a paper (or act as a discussant)
Good advice from Carleton University’s Nick Rowe: Every time I go to the [Canadian Economics Association] meetings I get disappointed at how poorly many of the papers are presented. At the risk of offending someone, I want to give some advice on how best to present a paper (or act as discussant): Presenters should concentrate […]
‘Canada? It’s a great place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit there’
Looking through The Economist story on the outlook for consumer spending over the Christmas season, I came across this graph: You’ll see every G-7 country there but one – Canada (okay, Japan’s not there either, but that’s because Christmas is less of a consumer spending season there). And you’ll also see forecasts for Ireland, Portugal, […]
The Intelligent Design theory of economics
Mark Thoma at Economist’s View has been wading through what non-economists think of economics, and he’s finding the exercise somewhat frustrating. For someone who hasn’t had formal training in the field, anti-economics is often more persuasive than the real thing. Paul Krugman ran into this particular brick wall a few years ago, and realised that […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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