Category fun
No, your kids don’t want your stuff
Dining room sets that cost thousands of dollars new can be picked up for a few hundred dollars (or less) on Kijiji or Craigslist. Here’s a quote from typical ad: “Solid wood in Excellent condition. Rarely used. I am moving to a smaller house and it needs to go. Price is negotiable.” It’s part of […]
Inequality and competition in a digital economy: a case study
Pokémon Go is an economy in miniature. There is exchange: players trade Pokémons and swap gifts. There is scarcity: the balls required to catch Pokémons are scarce, as is Pokémon storage capacity and other items in the game. There is production: through various activities, such as walking a Pokémon egg, or leaving a Pokémon in […]
Alpha Beta and the Libra Twist
Suppose I promise to be in the same place as you; but you make no promise to be in the same place as me. Then I am Beta follower and you are Alpha leader; because you go where you want to go and I must go to the same place to keep my promise. We […]
Reflections on Westeros
Well, it is the May long weekend and a celebration of Queen Victoria but this year it has also coincided with the end of Game of Thrones and its own set of Kings, Queens and associated dysfunctional noble figures. There has been a lot of angst expressed about how inadequate the final season has been […]
Bicycle Disequilibrium Theory
Suppose you need a bicycle to get to work. Suppose bicycles are a common property resource, because bike locks don't work. Every night the workers deposit their bicycles in the bike bank, and in the morning it's first come first served. And suppose that sometimes there aren't enough bicycles to go around. So sometimes the […]
Is the Russia-America Global CoDominium About to Begin?
In the wake of the Putin-Trump Helsinki summit, there is much speculation about what was actually said between Putin and Trump behind closed doors and the uncertainty spread throughout the American government about whether agreements had been reached on issues such as Syria and the Ukraine. The subsequent invitation to Putin to visit the White […]
The Tale of the Two Cobblers (collusive price cuts)
Mostly for fun, and teaching. But I think it might matter. A village had two cobblers. The right-handed cobbler was best at making right shoes. The left-handed cobbler was best at making left shoes. So the villagers would buy one shoe from each cobbler. Other villages were some distance away, so the cobblers had monopoly […]
“Profits = Investment – Saving”
Or, "Profits = Expenditure – Income". Those are just alternative ways of saying the same thing, for a closed economy, if investment and saving include government investment and saving. Most economists will say that's wrong. And it is wrong by standard definitions, where aggregate expenditure and income are the same thing, and investment and saving […]
A Balassa Samuelson theory of negative real interest rates despite productive investment and impatient representative agent
I think this is right (but I can't do the math to work out an example to be sure, though any competent grad student could). The idea is that you can get negative interest rates, despite productive investment and impatient consumers, because the prices of the goods you can invest to produce more of will […]
How can Halloween get started?
A day late, but whatever. It's easy to understand how money might get started. A non-smoker accepts cigarettes(pdf) he doesn't want in exchange for the jam he doesn't want. Then finds a smoker who will accept those cigarettes in exchange for biscuits he does want. That non-smoker has just used cigarettes as a medium of […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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