Category Labour markets
Staghunt and (the) IRS
"IRS" stands for "Increasing Returns to Scale". It means if you double all the inputs, you more than double the output. I first worried that US readers might think "IRS" stands for Internal Revenue Service (the US tax people). Then I realised that I want it to stand for that too. Staghunt is a simple […]
Could you pass O-level economics in Pakistan?
The question: What causes unemployment? The answer: Over the fold, taken from a textbook currently used for O-level (roughly grade 11) social studies in Pakistan.
Two Problems with Designing a Basic Income Experiment
WARNING: I don't do (micro) Public Finance. And I don't do experimental economics. Those who have read the literature may tell me they are well aware of these problems, or that I'm wrong about something. Suppose someone asked me to design an experiment to test whether Basic Income would be a Good thing. (They wouldn't […]
What is Employment Insurance For?
If Canada's Employment Insurance program was designed solely to insure workers against the loss of employment, it would look very different. For one thing, the premiums that employees and employers contribute would go towards paying benefits to people who have lost their jobs. But in 2013/14 – the most recent year for which I can find data – […]
Musical chairs with heterogeneity
There are two problems with musical chairs: The obvious problem: there aren't enough chairs for the kids that want to sit on them. The less obvious problem: chairs and kids are heterogeneous, so if kids grab any chair they can get, some tall kids will be sitting on short chairs and some short kids will […]
Reforming Government: Do We Need a Human Investment Super-Ministry?
From time to time, I like to ruminate on what could be done to better develop or improve the delivery of government services especially given the tendency of government ministries to overlap when providing services. This gets a further push when I am teaching public finance – as I am this term. There is of […]
The simple macroeconomics of monopsony power
If you loosen monetary policy in a standard macro model, you get an increase in output and employment in the short run, and an increase in the price level in the long run. That is not what happens if you assume monopsony power. The same loosening of monetary policy will cause a decrease of output […]
Labour market flows revisited
It's been a while since I've looked at patterns in gross labour market flows; the last time was here. The basic methodology is taken from Stephen Tapp's CJE article, in which he extracts labour market transitions from the Labour Force Survey Public Use Microdata Files. Not all transitions are covered by the LFS questionnaire, but […]
Lumbering Along in the Finding Data Process
Well, all I was trying to do was introduce a set of lecture slides on the nineteenth century timber trade with a simple overview of the Canadian logging industry's employment in the twentieth century. Well, three hours later it has proven to be a more frustrating exercise than I would have expected but here is […]
The efficiency wage case for maximum wage laws
I think Larry Summers is wrong, on a point of theory. He commits a fallacy of composition. (That's a brave way to start the day.) He says (HT John Cochrane): "Businesses will raise wages to a point where the cost is just balanced by the reduced bill for recruiting and motivating workers. At that point, […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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