Category Media
Income-splitting: An expensive way to solve a small problem, and to make a bigger problem worse
The Conservatives are floating the idea of income-splitting, and Andrew Coyne – who has apparently read Jean-Yves Duclos’ Innis Lecture that I referred to here – approves on the basis of fairness: For once, the crass appeal to the base is also the perfect means of broadening the base; the cynical vote-buying thing is also […]
“All economic news is bad”
Andrew Coyne reminds us of Easterbrook’s Law: Easterbrook’s Law [is] named for the American journalist Gregg Easterbook, who first conclusively proved that all economic news is bad: all news means change, and all change, no matter how broadly beneficial, makes some people worse off — who are invariably the focus of media attention. The Toronto […]
Flawed discounting of the Stern report
Max Wilkinson has a go in the Financial Times, complete with an over-the-top headline: Stern’s report is based on flawed figures. The issue is Stern’s choice of using a discount rate of 2-3% a year to discount the future costs of global warming: [T]he actual figure used by Sir Nicholas seems to have been between […]
Canada’s shrinking stock market
The Financial Times reports on a series of high-profile foreign takeovers of Canadian companies: This is getting serious: on current trends Céline Dion might be the only Canadian icon left. Many others are being picked off by foreigners. This year’s disappeared include Canada’s oldest corporation, the Hudson’s Bay Company; its two biggest nickel miners, Inco […]
The Toronto Star gets a mulligan
When I read this inane editorial, I was determined to get medieval on the TorStar editorial board’s behind. But then I got caught up in the National Post’s ‘nopigou‘ schtick, and I lost heart. Even though they’re kinda dim, the Toronto Star does mean well.
Nonsensical nonpigovianism
In which the National Post’s Terence Corcoran crawls out on a limb and starts hacking it off behind him: We open with his ‘Join the nopigou club‘ column, in reaction to Greg Mankiw’s campaign for higher gasoline taxes in the US. This column is greeted with a rather laconic reply from Mankiw, and a certain […]
The Toronto Star surpasses itself
The Star has a reputation for looking for a local angle in any story, and then making it the lede: some wag once predicted that it’s final edition would start with "End of world snarls Metro traffic." So I’m going to assume that today’s headline is an inside joke. An airplane hits a building in […]
A puzzling proxy from The Economist
From The Economist: [R]eal interest rates should be roughly the same as the trend rate of GDP growth (a proxy for the return on capital). This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this statement used there, and I once even wrote a letter asking about it. I’ve tried playing around with several expressions that describe […]
Mercantilism at the Globe and Mail
Courtesy of Jim Stanford: Why the rush to ink more deals? Where free trade is concerned, Canada is getting worse with practice: Now Ottawa is racing to seal a deal with South Korea. If trade with Korea then follows the same pattern as under our first five free-trade agreements, our imports will grow by 250 […]
The Globe and Mail scores another meaningless scoop
A worrisome trend at the national paper of record: first this, and now yet another pointless article congratulating itself for making use of the Access to Information Act to get information that was already well-known, but apparently not well-understood: Ottawa urged to push foreign takeovers; Outside investment has a ‘net benefit,’ internal files suggest:Federal officials […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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