Category International
Importing people is not like importing apples
Remember all the old Canadian nationalists? The ones who said that the (Canada-US) Free Trade Agreement would destroy Canadian culture? The ones we economists defeated back in the 1988 election? I'm beginning to wish we hadn't defeated them quite so thoroughly. They were wrong. But they sorta, kinda, did have a point. Social/economic institutions are […]
Temporary vs permanent fiscal policy in a small open inflation targeting economy
Just a short note as a backgrounder for the current Canadian debate about fiscal policy. This is totally unoriginal boring textbook stuff (at least I hope it is, anyway). Prerequisite: intermediate macro (or special permission to skip to the results if you promise not to ask me daft questions about where they came from). The […]
Switzerland as a closed-end mutual fund with a country attached
You can't say much beyond a snappy title in 140 characters, so I thought I should write a short post explaining what I meant. You can, if you want, think of (central bank) money as shares in a closed-end mutual fund. The mutual fund has assets, that are mostly financial assets. The returns from those […]
The Great Moderation: International Trends in Alcohol Consumption
December marks the start of the Christmas and holiday season in much of the world and celebration is often marked by the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The negative health effects of consuming too many alcoholic drinks are well documented and along with stricter laws on drinking and driving, the end result has been a decline […]
Just a little bit of Macro First
I don't have any easy answers to the "Micro first" vs "Macro first" debate when teaching Introduction to Economics. But this is what I do, and it seems to work a bit. And I have probably taught Intro about 30 times in my life. That experience should count for something. 1. We (Carleton University) are […]
Vortigern’s immigration policy
Economists aren't exactly noted for their expertise in Cultural Studies (I think that's what I'm doing here), but I'm going to give it a go. The fact that the Arthurian legend still resonates 1,500 years later tells us something about people, their hopes and fears. According to legend, Arthur was the British resistance leader who […]
A modest proposal for renewed imperialism
I hear that a lot of people want to migrate to…Finland. I'm pretty sure it's not because they like Finland's climate, or scenery. I don't think it's got anything to do with the physical geography of Finland. I think that they want to move to Finland because they like Finland's political, legal, and social institutions, […]
Are all Eurozone GDP data “fake”?
The title is more inflammatory than I want it to be, but I can't think of a simple way to ask the question properly. And it is a genuine question, because I don't know how they construct GDP data for Eurozone countries. And I know there's no chance I will be able to figure out […]
Seigniorage transfers and runs on common currencies
Two identical countries A and B share a common (paper) currency C. The demand for currency is 5% of annual (Nominal) GDP. Suppose B decides to quit the currency union and print its own currency. There are two different ways it could do this: 1. Convert and destroy. The people in B convert their C […]
A New Central Bank Blog
The Bank of England has just launched its own staff blog: Bank Underground. The Managing Editor is John Lewis and the blog is where the staff can air their views as part of the Bank of England becoming more open to the outside world.
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