This was written by U of Alberta's Andrew Leach. It originally appeared on his blog Rescuing the Frog. Today, what I initially thought was a mildly controversial statement about upstream vs. downstream profitability and value-added led to me finding myself with a little bit of egg on my face and also completely baffled about the way we […]

In Canada, outside of Quebec, it is illegal to drink alcohol, or even have an open container of alcohol, in a public place. Public drinking is banned throughout the US also. A number of other countries do not have such laws – in the UK, one can buy a bottle of beer in a pub […]

South Africa's system of apartheid was designed, not only to protect the privileges of the affluent, but to improve the desperate situation of "poor whites." Apartheid reserved decently paid skilled and semi-skilled manual jobs for them, making it possible for almost all whites to achieve a good life – a house, a car, steady employment, […]

Here is a test for any proposed carbon tax: does it create an incentive for people to make environmentally responsible tomato purchases? In winter, a Canadian faces two basic tomato options: hothouse tomatoes grown close(ish) to home, and field tomatoes imported from warmer climes, generally Mexico. Keeping a greenhouse at tomato growing temperature in the northern […]

Odds are, in first or second year university, your exam or esssay will be marked by a teaching assistant.  The teaching assistant is probably marking from an answer key or rubric. He or she has a list of things that she is looking for. If you give the TA all of the things that are […]

Every year I attempt to teach students the Coase theorem, and devise some new question to test their understanding of it. Every year I fail to communicate Coase's ideas.  Here is this year's Coase question (adapted from one by Jesse Bull):

A common solution to the falling-off poppy problem I have lost more Remembrance Day poppies than I can count. They just don't stay on. Some people combine patriotism with remembrance, and affix their poppy with a Canadian flag pin. The Canadian Legion, while acknowledging that a poppy attached with a flag pin is better than […]

The OECD makes its data publicly available through http://stats.oecd.org/. The OECD "warehouse technology" software is also used to power, for example, I.Stat, the Italian statistical agency's data extraction service. The comparable facility on the Statistics Canada website is CANSIM. The question for the day is: who does it better? What are the strengths/weaknesses of the CANSIM […]

From the back cover of one of my all-time favourite baseball books, Ball Four: When Ball Four was first published in 1970, it hit the sports world like a lightning bolt. Commissioners, executives, players and sportswriters were thrown into a state of shock. Stunned. Scandalized. The controversy was front–page news. Sportswriters called Bouton a Judas, a Benedict […]