Author Archives: wciecon
The Children’s Fitness Tax Credit: A Study in (Academic) Incentives
The Children's Fitness Tax Credit gives parents a non-refundable tax credit to recognize the cost of registering children in sports. When the credit was first introduced, its cash value was $77.50 – the amount of the credit ($500) times the basic marginal tax rate (then 15.5%). The popularity of the credit among parents has led […]
David Levine’s accidental Monetarism
I confess this is a bit of a "Gotcha!". But it's a bit more than that as well. It illustrates the difficulty that people (even economists) have in "seeing" money. Brad DeLong flatters me (but he's right that this is right up my street), then sends me to David Levine. Here's the "money quote" (sorry).
Social blah blah blah
I've been asked to write a paper reviewing "social benefits" delivered through the personal income tax system. I have no idea what this means. In economics, "social benefits" refers to the benefit side of a social benefit/cost calculation; the increase in social welfare associated with a particular project or policy. It has little to do […]
Lump of Labour, Say’s Law, and the slope of the AD curve
I wrote this partly for Sandwichman, and mostly I wrote it because this same question crops up time and time again. It's a very old question, but it always looks like a new question if the technology is new enough. People in caves were probably arguing about whether 3-D printing robots flints would cause mass […]
Tax Policy for Canadians with Disabilities: A Reading List
The amount of research on tax policy for Canadians with disabilities is fairly limited. Moreover, a number of key publications (such as the 2004 Brown and Torjman report) are hard to find. Thus, for my own convenience, and that of other researchers, I have created a reading list. Publications on this list are divided into […]
How much of a deficit will in fact be money-financed?
I want to do some very back-of-the-envelope calculations. (I will probably get the arithmetic wrong.) A bond-financed deficit is where the government prints bonds to finance a deficit. A money-financed deficit is where the government (or the central bank it owns) prints money to finance the deficit. They are different for two reasons: 1. Money […]
“Involuntary” unemployment as worsening trade-off
This is what I think an increase in "involuntary" unemployment looks like:
A Very Brief History of Demand and Supply
I’m teaching History of Economic Thought again this year and during my progression through the material this term what has struck me is the very long road over time –literally hundreds of years – to understanding markets and value as the simultaneous interaction both supply and demand side factors culminating in the standard diagram of […]
The Land Theory of Value
Last night I spoke with my Dutch ancestor again. Nick van Rowe told me about the Land Theory of Value, which began with the French, but was perfected by the Dutch. This is what he told me: Science has proved that land existed prior to both labour and capital. The Universe existed billions of years […]
A silly question for anti-austerians
Let's make up some silly numbers. Suppose the national debt was, let's say, 1,000% (ten times) annual GDP. And suppose the budget deficit was, let's say, 50% of GDP. And suppose your economy hit the Zero Lower Bound, and suppose you thought that your own central bank's monetary policy could do no more to increase […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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