Category Media
L’affaire Potter
You are all, I think, familiar with the details of L'Affaire Potter, so I need not enumerate them here. If you aren't already familiar with this story, you probably don't care what I have to say about it, so you can skip the rest of this post. But as a Quebec-based academic with a weekly […]
Econoblogging – still a Worthwhile Canadian Initiative?
This Friday I will be joining colleagues in international affairs, journalism, public policy and political science to talk about "Academics in the Media Landscape: The Role of Scholar-Columnist-Bloggers". The panel is part of Carleton's Visions for Canada, 2042 conference, which explores "the ways innovative collaboration among researchers and the community may be the most effective response to […]
That height study: bad science, bad reporting, both – or neither?
It's been reported on NPR: Americans are shrinking, while Chinese and Koreans sprout up. In the New York Times: Adults have become shorter in many countries. In the Guardian: Women and men have grown taller over last century. On Global News: Canadians don't stack up in height quite like they used to. In the Daily Telegraph: British overtake Americans after growing […]
Place for comments on “Keynesian Parables of Thrift and Hoarding”
This is not really a blog post; it's an experiment. I have no idea if it will work, but the downside costs seem trivial. If you subscribe to Review of Keynesian Economics, or if your university has a subscription, you can read my article "Keynesian Parables of Thrift and Hoarding". (Anyone can read the abstract […]
3 practical things, and one abstract thing economists could do to improve economic coverage in the media
This was written by CBC Radio's Matthew Lazin-Ryder 1. Pitch better stories Frances Woolley rightly states that Canadian journalists put a disproportionate amount of our time into following up on Stats Can reports, OECD reports, and think-tank publications. The primary reason is simplicity. Virtually any of the talking heads in our rolodexes can say something […]
Four practical things journalists could do to improve economics coverage in the media
1. Find better stories. The Canadian media does a pretty good job of covering Statistics Canada and OECD news releases, and think tank reports. Where they lag behind the US is in coverage of academic research. Take, for example, a paper published in Canadian Public Policy last year by Luc Godbout, Yves Trudel and Suzie […]
How (some) Canadian academic economists learned to love the media
The following are notes for a panel discussion with Andrew Coyne, Tavia Grant, Kristina Partsinevelos, Chris Ragan and Chris Waddell, organized together with Stephen Gordon, at the CEA meetings at Ryerson University on Saturday, May 30th. Program information here. Registration info here. Media info here. At the 2007 Canadian Economics Association meetings, there was a […]
There are no Friedmans today, except maybe Friedman himself
How come no economist on the right is asking "Where are the Galbraiths of yesteryear?"? It's because Milton Friedman won the debate, and John Kenneth Galbraith lost. Both Friedman (on the right) and Galbraith (on the left) were once leading public intellectuals and economists. I used to read them both. I wonder how many young […]
Doug Saunders has written a dreadful column about the “resource curse”, and I’m going to explain why it’s dreadful
This column by Doug Saunders on the "resource curse" in last Saturday's Globe and Mail is quite dreadful: When the price of oil is the foundation of your country’s economy, a sudden plunge to half its value focuses the mind wonderfully, doesn’t it? One's heart sinks at the very first sentence: the premise is wildy at odds […]
Where has all the spam gone?
Dumb question. The most recent genuine spam comment in the WCI spam filter is dated 17th February. The second most recent is dated 4th February, and the third is dated 28th January. There are 30 spam comments dated 28th January, and 62 dated 27th January. And roughly the same number each and every day before […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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