Category Teaching
Micro Profs teaching Intro Macro
My crappy little Twitter poll isn't conclusive of course, but it mostly agrees with my priors based on anecdotal evidence, so I think it's probably mostly right. I think this points to a problem, in two senses: Finding profs willing and able to teach Intro well is not easy. It's low status (and economists dumping […]
Project Link update
I've just updated Project Link, my attempt to piece together the bits and pieces of published Statistics Canada data into a coherent history of the post-war Canadian economy. (The introductory post is here, and a post on the first update is here.) Here are the main elements: Incorporating Statistics Canada's long-awaited publication of its expenditure […]
Gross Domestic Income in Canada, 1947-2018
The latest update of Project Link includes estimates for national accounts income measures: Gross National Income (formerly known as Gross National Product), Net National Income, compensation of employees, and disposable income, all going back to 1947Q1. I've also added Gross Domestic Income. GDI is a fairly recent arrival in the national accounts, and it takes […]
The Tale of the Two Cobblers (collusive price cuts)
Mostly for fun, and teaching. But I think it might matter. A village had two cobblers. The right-handed cobbler was best at making right shoes. The left-handed cobbler was best at making left shoes. So the villagers would buy one shoe from each cobbler. Other villages were some distance away, so the cobblers had monopoly […]
“Monetary Policy Accommodation” and Upward-sloping IS curves
If you believe that the IS curve slopes up, then what the Bank of Canada says about "monetary policy accommodation" makes sense. If you believe the IS curve slopes down, like in the textbooks, then it doesn't make sense. This is supposed to be a simple teaching post. My own mind is pretty simple anyway. […]
Monetary tightening can lower real interest rates
It's the investment accelerator. Monetary tightening means lower expected NGDP; real interest rates can go either way. Think of this as a teaching post, to explain the intuition. Or look at Miles Kimball's great post. Here's a thought-experiment. Do not take this thought-experiment literally. It's just my weird way of doing the math, where I […]
Price-level targeting as an automatic stabiliser for inflation
Targeting the price level could mean lower variation of inflation than targeting inflation. The best way to target inflation might be to target the price level instead. It's one of those paradoxes of pre-commitment. A promise to do something you don't want to do can affect others' expectations, and others' actions, and help you get […]
If r < g, bond-finance is like currency-finance
A world where the interest rate on government bonds is (permanently) less than the growth rate of GDP ("r<g") is a weird world. The government can run a Ponzi scheme, where it borrows (sells more bonds) to pay for the interest on the existing bonds, so the stocks of bonds grows at the rate of […]
So, what *are* the differences between a Government’s Budget and a Household’s Budget?
You've probably seen examples. Some poor non-economist says something like: "Governments, like households, must live within their means". And economists all point their fingers and laugh and say that's a fallacy. So, what are the differences between a government's budget and a household's budget? And do those differences matter? This is just a simple "teaching" […]
The Devil You Know vs The Market For Lemons
I told my friend Mike I was thinking of trading my car in for one that used less gas. Nowadays I would talk about the Market for Lemons as a reason against doing what I was thinking of doing. But in 1974 I didn't know about Akerlof's famous paper, and neither did Mike, who was […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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