Category fun
Another reason to approve of Krugman’s Nobel prize
He knows the joke behind the title of this blog. When I realised the magnitude of the utter hopelessness of finding an interesting title for a blog on economics, written by a Canadian academic, I decided to go with irony. Update: Here's yet another. Paul Krugman points us to an autobiographical piece: Admittedly, there were […]
Paul McCartney is under-rated
Quebec City is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year, and the people organising the festivities managed to persuade Paul McCartney to come and give a free concert on the Plains of Abraham last Sunday night. AND IT WAS FREAKING AWESOME! There were some 250,000 of us out there, and the buzz has yet to die […]
The economics of Scrooge
Stackelberg Follower has a delightful post on Market failure in Christmas, written in the well-established tradition of applying formal economic modeling techniques to a thorny social problem. Here is the setup: A model: Denote the degree to which advertisers push christmas by ‘Push’. This includes seasonal music playing in malls, Santa set up in said […]
Gentle reader, you are a genius
At least, according to this page: So far, the only other economics blog that I’ve found that is in this tiny and marginalised elite and distinguished group is Econbrowser. (Update: add the Becker-Posner blog to that list). Not incoincidentally, the typical ranking for a top economics blog is a high school reading level. [h/t: The […]
Why I won’t be recording my lectures anytime soon
Mark Thoma is following the lead of Brad DeLong (among others) and has started recording his lectures. This is of course a very good idea, and I hope that the trend will continue. But it’s not for me – I lecture in French. "But Stephen," some of you may be asking, "isn’t that awfully anglo-centric […]
Maybe Steve Levitt should start drinking Canadian beer
I really feel for Rob Oxoby. He wrote a joke paper (8-page pdf) about AC-DC while killing time at a Vancouver airport bar, put it up on his web page, and passed it along to a couple of friends. Unfortunately for him, it eventually caught the attention of Steve Levitt. This put Oxoby in the […]
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.
There’s a sucker born every Christmas shopping season
The electric BBQ marshmallow toaster:
How to borrow money
The process is quite easy, provided you borrow enough. Have you ever, dear readers, had occasion to borrow money? Have you ever borrowed ten dollars under a rigorous promise of your word of honor as a Christian to pay it back on your next salary day? Have you ever borrowed as much as a million […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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