Category Frances Woolley
Freedom, fried?
The message is clever, inspirational….
A plug for optimal currency areas
Pictured on the right is my current collection of plugs and chargers – North American-type plug for (locked) Canadian cell phone, UK type plug for UK phone, charger with Europlug for South African phone (not ideal, but the phone was only $15), plus a UK and South African adaptor thrown in for artistic effect. […]
Take that, Steve Saideman
My colleague, Steve Saideman, has a thing about milk in bags. On Saideman's Semi-Spew he claims that, as compared to gallon milk jugs, they're an "inferior technology." They're not even good for the environment because "bags in which milk may be delivered have no other purpose. A gallon jug, on the other hand, has a vast array […]
Harmless remedy or dangerous pharmaceutical?
In Canada, melatonin is deemed to be a "nutritional supplement." It's sold in most pharmacies and health food stores as a natural and healthy way of overcoming jetlag or ensuring a good night's sleep. In the UK, melatonin is a harder to come by. In 1995, its designation was changed from nutritional supplement to "medicinal product", which meant that […]
Most Read Posts of 2012
Here are WCI's most read posts of 2012. For the first time this year, I've added the number of page views, normalized so that the most read post has a page view score of 100.
The Macroeconomics of Middle Earth
Smaug the dragon is typically viewed as a fiscal phenomenon, depressing economic activity by burning woods and fields, killing warriors, eating young maidens, and creating general waste and destruction. Yet peoples – whether elvish, dwarvish, or human – have considerable capacity to rebuild. Why did the coming of Smaug lead to a prolonged downturn in […]
Giving Deadlines
Last summer, while walking the streets of Kingston, I encountered a wandering horde of business economists, and joined them for drinks. We got onto behavioural economics and financial decision-making, and one of the business economics folks started talking about the charitable donations deadline. It would be a good idea, he argued, to move the charitable donations […]
Does not ship to this address
Dad wants a golf ball retriever for Christmas. I found the perfect one on Amazon – the #1 selling Callaway 15 foot golf ball retriever for $27.80. But when I went to check out my purchase, the dread message appeared: "Does not ship to this address." I had been browsing on amazon.com, not amazon.ca.
The dirty secret of economics education
It's hardly a secret to anyone who's worked in an economics department: some students enrol in economics because they want to study something that seems vaguely useful, but they don't have the grades, or the mathematics and language skills, to make it in business or engineering.
Who is the caregiver?
In the picture on the right, who is the caregiver, the man or the woman? (To find out the answer, click "Continue reading…").
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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