Category Monetary policy
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 […]
Money as store of wealth?
This is something that always bugs me with the textbooks' definition of money. They start out well. They provide a functional definition of money; "money is what money does". If people in a given time and place use cigarettes as money, then cigarettes are money, in that time and place. Moneyness is not a property […]
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 […]
The mute king
Once upon a time there was a king. He was king because his father had been king before him, and his father before that. It was just kings, all the way back. The king gave orders, which people obeyed, because he was king. The king gave good orders, and because the people obeyed those orders, […]
Fiscal Policy, and the macroeconomics of doing nothing, redux
I don't think Simon Wren-Lewis will find this an annoying argument against fiscal policy. I hope not anyway. Let's assume that New Keynesian macroeconomics is 100% correct. What role is there for fiscal policy?
The politics of NGDPLP targeting, redux
Back in November 2011, there was a part of the world that I didn't understand. The politics of monetary policy didn't make sense to me. Now the world is starting to make more sense. It's not that my understanding has changed. It's the world that has begun to change. Specifically, John Quiggin has come out […]
The Bank of Canada revises up its forecast
There's not been a lot of drama in the Bank of Canada's recent announcements for its overnight rate target, nor does it look as though there will be for several months. As long as there's a non-negligible risk that the eurozone will produce a financial crisis, the Bank of Canada won't be in any hurry […]
The slow speed of recovery, PSST, plucking, and skewed news
Judging by output, employment, and unemployment, the Canadian economy hit bottom around the middle of 2009. Two and a half years later, output, employment and unemployment have recovered a lot. But like most observers I believe, and certainly hope, that we have not yet had a full recovery to the long run sustainable path. Why […]
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 […]
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