Business
Counter-cyclical demand watch #1
So we’re in a recession, and in a recession people tend to buy less of most everything. That is unless you’re dealing with inferior goods. So what’s been shown to be economic inferior goods lately?
Pasta. From a post to Curious Capitalist you can learn about the Pasta Index and the currently fabulous fortunes of the [...]
Alberta government continues with vague economic pronouncements
From the Canadian Press comes the announcement that the Alberta Government feels that it has the oilsands problem figured, since they announced that they have a 20 year plan. Directly from the Canadian Press:
The report says the energy industry should be required “to use best available technology” that is “economically achievable.” The fine print doesn’t [...]
White guys do not look all alike…
Catching up child development and behaviour related articles that I’ve seen and read over the past few weeks.
A study was recently published by Sophie Labrecht, Lara J. Pierce, Michael J. Tarr and, James W. Tanaka, from Brown University and the University entitled “Perceptual Other-Race Training Reduces Implicit Racial Bias“. The team attempted to:
…examine the relationship [...]
Alberta Gov’t incentive “plan” sounds economically illiterate
As many of you know, there has been lots of recent discussion about Alberta’s competitive advantage compared to other regimes in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basic (WCSB), and other jurisdictions. Recently, a few reports have suggested that Alberta is the highest cost region in the highest cost basin in the world right now. There are [...]
Why the federal budget is poorly conceived…
Ok, ok, ok. I know it’s late and this topic has been pundited to death, but I figured I should throw my two dollars in here.
The Canadian Federal Government recently (last week) brought down the new budget. In it there seemed to be something for everyone, and like in the US it’ll take us, federally, [...]
Alberta royalties miss the point…
While there are a variety of other issues at play it seems that the Fair Share plan, since changed to the New Royalty Framework and most recently rebadged as the Alberta Royalty Framework, isn’t doing much to improve the prospects of the oil industry.
It’s like no-one pictured oil at less than $50/bbl when the Stelmach [...]
Surprise! More competition serves consumers…
From a paper entitled How does access regulation affect broadband penetration?, the authors do a study trying to determine the type of regulation that provides for the highest acceptance of broadband internet access.
They compare three regulatory regime styles that in turn allow for:
single technology where resellers sell the same thing
single technology where resellers also can [...]
Madoff’s con won’t be fixed by regulations…
…only by improved personal responsibility.
To put things very simply, it wasn’t a lack of regulations that let Madoff run his scheme for as long as he did.
What allowed him to evade prosecution by current laws was merely a lack of due dilligence on the part of the investors in his “fund”. While most investments take [...]
Bush was a freemarket leader?
Since the market crash that followed the cratering of the property market in the US and elsewhere, many people have been shouting that this cratering proves that capitalism and markets don’t work. The contol-the-world types of both ends of the spectrum have trotted this one out, often for political expediency, but mostly because they seem [...]
Starting up again…
So I’ve actually been nagged by my loyal reader again and have decided to shake off the holiday blahs and get back into this effluent that I call “writing”.
Over the holidays betwixt events and Events and the like I worked my way throughsafer loads of TV and movies and had the chance to read through, [...]
Why you shouldn’t trust forecasts…
…but, you need them anyway. A simple example showing why financial market forecasts aren’t worth much except in terms of historical forensics.
Recently TD Bank suggests that oil prices will be 30USD in the 2nd quarter of 2009.
In their prior forecast they suggested that the price would be closer to 45USD.
In a report on agriculture from [...]
Economic Manhattan Project or simple creative destruction?
In the latest Edge newsletter is an article proposing and discussing an economic Manhattan Project where a group of good scientists would get together and “solve” the current economic crisis. On the surface this doesn’t sound completely bad when the initial description is:
The economic crisis has to be stabilized immediately. This has to be carried [...]
New Toronto trash service offers higher incentive to cheat
In caring, kind Toronto, if you want your garbage picked up, you need to place it in city mandated grey bins or you need to have it labelled with city-issued garbage tags. If neither of these is done, you can’t expect your trash to be collected. Additionally home owners must pay according to the volume [...]
iPhone proving itself out as a real computing platform
I got an email from a friend of mine last week that showed a new app for the iPhone. I’ve been slightly resistant to portable computing platforms as I’ve played with Blackberries in the past and am a current owner of a Nokia N800 - both of which a reasonable cool, epsecially the resolution on [...]
Canadians less likely to dole out bribes
Transparency International just released their Bribe Payers Index this week. It tracks the perceived propensity of various nationalities to pay bribes in foreign countries. The rankings are determined by polling almost three thousand executives from around the world with questions like:
How often do firms headquartered in (country name) engage in bribery in this country?
Basic stats:
Canada [...]
Disincenting everyone is a poor policy idea
I stumbled across this book by Daniel Raventos distributed by the University of Michigan Press. In it Mr. Raventos suggests that everyone should have, freely available, a subsistence income with no strings attached. He supports this idea with these perceived benefits:
Anyone could opt out of employment at any time. Those with few skills would no [...]
Pay the fine before you light up inside
In Holland where the laws are much nicer to pot than to cigarettes, some bars that illegally still allow smoking have resorted to asking for a cover charge to defray eventual fines. It’s not only an interesting way to make a statement about laws that affect property rights it’s a solid economic move as well, [...]
kumo.com…
So back in 1996 there was a company that needed hip name, especially since they were diving into Web and site development. But they thought that there weren’t many decent domain names left, especially since all the 3 letter .com domains had already been taken and a lot of the good 4 letter .com domains [...]
What’s wrong with $70 an hour?
There seems to be a bit of angry-meme competition on the web amongst commentators with respect to how much a GM employee costs - currently circulating at about $70/hour.
James Surowieki was the first I read, stating:
… you only get to that number if you include all of the costs G.M. is paying for retired workers. [...]
Pay them less and watch the success roll in…
…or at take the hatchet to executive bonuses to at least stem the tide of failure?
Dan Ariely* writes about the effects of varying bonus sizes in a NY Times op-ed piece this past week, which I just read in this weekend’s National Post. He and some colleagues did three experiments that had interesting and unexpected [...]
Spam down 40 to 70%
Depending on who you talk to spam is down 40 to 70% since a major spam gang has been shut down in San Jose, CA.
For those of us who typically get hundreds of spam per day, it’s been nice lately to actually be able to check the junk box and not have to wade through [...]
Supreme Court of Canada inflicts health tax on airlines
The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) in their infinite wisdom has passed down a decision forcing airlines to accomodate the disabled, even when the costs become prohibitive. Interesting that by this decision they also included obesity as a disability.
Since Air Canada and WestJet weren’t able to prove that accommodation of the disabled, including the exceptionally [...]
Lego loses to Canuck copy
So after many years battling it out in the courts Lego loses it’s block shaped patent since it’s an obvious shape. From the Financial Post:
EU trademark law “precludes registration of any shape” that is “sufficient to obtain the intended technical result,” the court said. This is the law “even if that result can be achieved [...]
From today’s Financial Post
A couple of well penned paragraphs in the business section showed up in the Post today.
The first was a reprint of an editorial from the WSJ talking about the potential nationalization of the auto industry (read: Big 3):
A Detroit bailout would also be unfair to other companies that make cars in the U.S. Yes, those [...]
2 for 1 better than half price
The Guardian reports that Broadspeed.com significantly improved sales by changing their tactic from half-price to two-for-one:
Empson said: “It was amazing. We had been trying to sell those cars online at half price for nearly a month and they were selling, but it was nothing special. But when we made the deal two-for-one, we got 22,000 [...]
Starting small
Couple of moderatly interesting papers ended up in the this week’s NBER newsletter:
#1 - Henry Sauermann & Wesley M. Cohen in What Makes Them Tick? Employee Motives and Firm Innovation write: “Overall, intrinsic motives, particularly the desire for intellectual challenge, appear to benefit innovation more than extrinsic motives such as pay.”
While the abstract is lean [...]
