Category Teaching
Can you please read a first year textbook?
You will recognise yourself from my description. (Or you will recognise others who fit this description). You are probably very smart. You are probably very well-educated — either formally, or self-educated, and probably both. You spend a lot of time on the internet reading economics blogs and commenting on those blogs. You maybe even have […]
Rat choice theory
The magnificent edifice of modern microeconomics is built on a simple model of human behaviour: rational choice theory. The rational person has goals; things she wants and values. She makes choices; she acts to achieve her goals. Saints can be rational, and so can sinners. What matters is having preferences and making choices, whatever those choices […]
Working on Claim in a Low Wage Economy
People value time – and money. There is a trade-off: to get more money, a person must spend less time on other things – child care or home repairs, making cinnamon buns or swimming in Meech Lake, playing Call of Duty or Tetris. In the absence of income support programs, or help from family and […]
Artsie non-linearity, economics, and the concrete steppes
When economists say that something is "linear", rather than "non-linear", they normally mean it is a straight line, rather than curved. Y=a+bX is linear; Y=a+bX2 is non-linear. That is NOT what I am going to mean by "linear" in this post. Instead, I am going to use the words "linear" and "non-linear" in the way […]
Would eliminating milk quotas be a Pareto improvement?
Today I looked at last week's public finance exam, and got an all-too-familiar sinking feeling: I've asked a question that's almost impossible to answer. Here it is: Currently the production of milk in Canada is restricted through a system of quotas. Eliminating quotas on milk production in Canada is best described as:a. A potential Pareto […]
Defence may be a public good. Military spending isn’t.
Public goods are, as defined by economists, non-rival, meaning that the cost of an additional person using the good is zero, and non-excludable, meaning that it is technologically impossible, or prohibitively costly, to prevent people from enjoying the goods. When something is a pure public good, private markets will fail to supply it in adequate […]
Designing exam questions: the realism-clarity trade-off
Which is the better exam question:
How to answer “true, false, uncertain” questions
True, false, uncertain: "Natural gas price controls during the late 1970s hurt producers at the expense of consumers, but did improve economic efficiency." (Source) True, false, uncertain: "Assuming that the Ricardian Equivalence proposition holds in small open economy (SOE), a temporary tax cut will have no effects on the current account." (Source) From first year […]
Teaching inflation targeting with ISLM
In intermediate macroeconomics the ISLM model (and the Mundell-Fleming ISLMBP open economy version) is the main workhorse. But we also want to teach how the Bank of Canada (or whatever) targets inflation. This post is about how I use the ISLM to teach inflation targeting. It's a bit clunky, and I haven't got all the […]
The case for taxing basic groceries
Economists frequently argue that taxing basic groceries is a good idea – for example, see these papers/posts making the case for taxing food in the US, Canada, and New Zealand.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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