Category International
Teaching Purchasing Power Parity
This is a simple post about how I have been teaching Purchasing Power Parity in ECON1000 for the last couple of years.
International finance with no international trade
Sometimes I like to make assumptions I know are totally false. Not (or not always) for simplicity, but just to see what happens. It helps me understand the world better. For example, sometimes I like to assume a barter economy; it helps me understand monetary exchange better to see what would happen if we didn't […]
Iceland and the Loonie?
Some people in Iceland want to abandon the Krona and adopt the Loonie. This came as rather a surprise to me. Here are some thoughts off the top of my head:
Thoughts on Greece
Greece seems to have slipped below the front pages. We've moved on to other things. I haven't. I don't have much to say here, but I can't say nothing. This is too important. I'm just going to record my thoughts, for whatever little they are worth. I have been Googling around, trying to understand the […]
Why I’m Not Worried About Italy’s Economy
With all the doom and gloom about Europe’s economy and the debt crisis, some recent statistics from the Italian Central Bank caused me to reflect that despite its problems, the Italian economy is more robust than one might think because of its strong performance when it comes to private wealth.
Three questions on the transmission of business cycles
I've been mulling this over for the last couple of weeks. I haven't really come up with a clear answer. So I thought I would just throw it out there. I've got three questions. The most important question is the third question. 1. Assume I am an individual household or small firm, and that I […]
Is Ontario to Canada as Spain is to Europe?
I sometimes like to look at Canada through the eurozone lens: both are monetary unions in which certain regions have done better than others. For example, there are some interesting parallels between Spain and Ontario, in particular, the fact that employment losses in Spain and Ontario were disproportionately larger than employment losses elsewhere in Europe and Canada. So this […]
Friedrich List: The Un-Adam Smith
Here is something a little different. My history of economic thought course has just finished up with John Stuart Mill and I will be moving into the socialist reaction to classical economic theory. Most of us probably associate Marx and socialism with criticism of the classical school but there was also an early non-socialist reaction […]
General Gluts, Secular Stagnation and the World Economy
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned today on her visit to Beijing that the global economy faces the risk of a "lost decade" with little or no growth and that without action, the world faces worsening financial instability and a possible collapse of demand. This news item also coincided with my morning lecture […]
Dealing with the Debt Crisis: A Greek Maneuver?
It has been a dizzying week around the world as fears of Greek debt default lead to yet another roller-coaster ride on world stock markets after Papandreou called for a domestic referendum on the European led rescue plan.
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