Category Frances Woolley
Why I don’t recognize your foreign educational credentials
The Canadian immigration literature seems to regard employers with a hint of disapproval. For example, a recent survey talks about "the failure to recognize foreign credentials" as if employers and others are, for some unaccountable reason, not able to recognize a credential when it's staring them in the face. I've just spent the last couple of hours trying to […]
How to cope with an autistic economist
Mainstream economics is sometimes described as an autistic way of understanding the world, and prominent economists such as Scott Sumner have gone public with their autistic tendencies. The "autism" of an academic economist is so far away from the struggles of a head-banging, withdrawn, perseverating child it seems almost wrong to equate the two. Yet, as Tyler Cowen […]
The basic arithmetic of RRSPs and TFSAs
Financial advisors seem to be everywhere this time of year, pontificating about the merits of Registered Retirement Savings Accounts (RRSPs) and Tax Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs). I'm not a financial advisor, but I know a bit about how the tax system works, and can do some basic arithmetic.
The rejection letter I’m tempted to send
Dear Dr Untenured, Thank you for your submission to Review of Economic Theory of Consumer Habits (RETCH), dated May 8, 2011. After contacting ten reviewers, all of whom have declined to read your manuscript, I have given up, and am rejecting your paper due to lack of interest. Yours, Frances Woolley, Co-Editor.
Morals? Can’t afford them.
Noahpinion, Tyler Cowen and others have recently posted about the deserving poor.
Raising the pension age: not if, but when.
It is not a question of if: Canada will, eventually, raise the age at which people are entitled to claim Guaranteed Income Supplement and Old Age Security. The US is raising its full retirement age, the UK is raising its state pension age. We'll raise our pension age for the same reason that they raised […]
The efficiency case for nepotism
A firm wanting to invest in a worker, to train her and give her valuable skills, runs a risk: what if she leaves, and takes her valuable human capital elsewhere? A firm can induce its employees to stay through deferred compensation. It pays new employees less than their productivity merits, and senior employees more. The […]
Burn the mathematics
Paul Krugman thinks that economic discourse on the blogosphere is a good thing. He's right when it comes to economic theory. Economic theory is deductive: assumptions + fancy stuff = conclusions. Ultimately, the path from assumptions and the conclusions doesn't matter, as long as it's logically consistent. As Alfred Marshall said, translate mathematical results into English, […]
The cruel consequences of moral hazard in health care
Our health care system devotes too many resources to prolonging life, and too few to improving its quality. A case described by Lisa Sanders vividly illustrates what I have in mind: A couple of years earlier she started “walking like a drunk,” [the patient] told the slender, middle-aged doctor. Her legs were weak and her […]
Putting the Econ into Econometrics
I have the 1988 and 2009 editions Gujarati and Porter's Basic Econometrics in front of me. Chapter 1 has been updated for the 21st century: The Internet has literally revolutionized data gathering. If you just "surf the net" with a keyword (e.g. exchange rates), you will be swamped with all kinds of data sources. In […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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