Economics
Blogging for the inverterately lazy
Hello, to my now single reader. (I still think it’s my mom…)
Anyway, I’ve obviously not got my act together to blog like Megan McArdle, and as I’m thinking more and more, argue like Don Boudreaux (of whom I am enough of a fanboy to recently buy donboudreauxismyhero.com after seeing some sympatico from Steven Landsburg and [...]
Hiatus
I just wanted to let my loyal fans (yes there are now two) know that I haven’t been killed in a freak gasoline fight accident. Over the past few weeks kids, holidays, work and work have overwhelmed my time making me incapable of acheiving my goal of blogging like Megan McArdle.
Over the next coupla weeks [...]
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 [...]
Half or double - Alberta government employee salaries
Straight out of See, comes an article describing expectations for the new sitting of the Alberta Legislature. Tucked in near the bottom of the article is a paragraph describing a move by Harry Chase:
Social Workers: Harry Chase, the Liberal MLA for Calgary-Varsity, is calling for a review of the wages for social workers or other [...]
Strange names likely screw with your kid’s future
Do unusual names really affect future outcomes for your children? A study out of the States by David E. Kalist and Daniel Y. Lee - First Names and Crime: Does Unpopularity Spell Trouble? - suggests that this might be true.
Their objective in the study:
We investigate the relationship between first name popularity and juvenile delinquency to [...]
Economic experience in formative years affects adult attitudes
In a paper entitled Depression Babies: Do Macroeconomic Experiences Affect Risk-Taking? (PDF) Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel try to determine what effect the larger economic environment during childhood has on adult economic decision making. They lead in with the idea that people are biased and will incorporate all available historical data from their experience. From [...]
Stay grumpy and you’ll have a more realistic worldview…
A 2008 paper out of Australia, entitled “Can bad weather improve your memory? An unobtrusive field study of natural mood effects on real-life memory” attempts to show the effects of mood on subjects ability to recall items recently seen in a shop.
Using weather as a proxy for mood, what they found was those who were [...]
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 [...]
Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy
If you have any interest in the writings of Adam Smith and see his name and works seemingly quoted in the press, you really should take a peak at Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy. Gavin Kennedy, a prof out of the UK, does an excellent job deconstructing and critically evaluating the general misuse, misunderstanding and misquoting [...]
Top 5 things I’d like to see Obama do
These are more pet issues that the world saving ideas that top other lists, but they’d make a significant difference in America and in it’s sphere of influence.
1. Trade with Cuba
The trade embargo has allowed a despot to drive his country into abject poverty, and kill thousands. Trade will increase - and would have increased [...]
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 [...]
All the financial crisis blather is making economics reading boring…
We need more challenging and entertaining stuff like these (mostly from the recent AEA conference):
Dwight R Lee’s article entitled Should Government Reduce Inequality in Life Spans? with such swell quotes as:
Government transfers to reduce the gender gap in life expectancy would do little more than reduce improvements in both women’s and men’s life expectancies. For [...]
AC/DC efficiency research presented at the AEA
After publishing his mock economics paper, then having the joke missed entirely during a (mini-)rant by Steven Levitt (who later apologized), Robert J. Oxoby of the University of Calgary has reached a new height with the presentation of his paper - entitled ON THE EFFICIENCY OF AC/DC: BON SCOTT VERSUS BRIAN JOHNSON - to the [...]
Global warming duds…
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy represented an article from the Melbourne Herald Sun entitled Top 10 Dud Global Warming Predictions.
While I would rank myself as a skeptic of global warming, especially of the histrionic man-bear-pig Al Gore variety, articles like this entertain me for reasons other than the debunking.
Global Warming, or Climate Change as [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
UK: Welcome mats are health and safety risk
A recent Telegraph story tells of the local council in Gosport deciding that residents of council flats who have welcome mats outside their doors are quite possibly causing safety problems. Not only this, but some renters have been threatened with legal action if they don’t remove the mats. This was opposed by some senior local [...]
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, [...]
Public schools are a must unless you’re rich
TSC points out that left-of-centre Obama is sending his kids to a private school instead of a public one. While this may be surprising to some, most left-leaning politicians with enough cash send their kids to private schools while stridently opposing anything resembling a voucher system.
This is true of most aspects of enforced public funding, [...]
Good teeth help women in the labour market
Sherry Glied and Matthew Neidell attempt to show in a recent paper that having good teeth is an asset in the labour market.
Their study tracked the earnings of a mix of people comparing those who grew up in communities with fluoridated drinking water and those without. They came to a variety of conclusions based on [...]
Canadian political leaders - someone will lose face
I’ve avoided writing about the whole detent going in Ottawa, mostly because the whole thing has been making me utterly furious - almost apoplectic.
Recently, for the first time in 20 years I’ve become more politically active at all four levels of government that sit, some heavier than others, on top of us - federal, provincial, [...]
We don’t need no stinking property rights
From the Frontier Centre this week comes an article about the truly unstable state of Canadian personal wealth.
Stephanie Farrington found that 50% of Canadian’s wealth is tied up in property, will a large chunk of that sunk into primary residences. What makes this unstable, besides the current expectations of home price deflation, is that in [...]
Invisible Hand analysed
Three friends of mine, who I will for the sake anonymity name PJ, Mike1 and Mike2, were chatting over brews recently and got into a discussion about the meaning behind the term Invisible Hand. They knew that it was coined by Adam Smith and that Milton Friedman had commented on it as well.
PJ had suggested [...]
Niels Veldhuis says don’t blame greed
An excellent article (PDF) written by Niels Veldhuis of the Fraser Institute lays out solid description of the poor government incentives that significantly contributed to the recent market crunch. He does all of this while discussing the difference between greed and self-interest (one of my favourite topics) and why self-interest is truly what makes the [...]
Bail out everyone dammit…
And merely because I a fan, here’s a quote from P.J. O’Rourke on bailouts:
Print journalists may soon have to send their kids to public schools, feed dry food to their cats, and give up their leases on Prius automobiles and get the Hummers that are being offered at such deep discounts these days. … The [...]
Toronto Mayor clueless on basic economics
David Miller - the seemingly basket-case mayor of Toronto - has decided to change the way they’re trying to discourage plastic bag use by Toronto citizens.
It seems that the original idea was to force supermarkets to pay their customers a dime for bringing in a reusable bag. The change was to instead have the stores [...]
Alberta Liberal Party votes - make it matter
The Alberta Liberal Party (ALP) membership* is voting for a new leader coming up very soon. There are three men standing for the job: David Swann, Dave Taylor, and Mo Elsalhy.
The party has been an also-ran player in the province of Alberta for the past 8 decades, many times fading to single-digit seats in the [...]
Turn the world economy around - legalize drugs
I was reading the Post blog today and came across a clip covering a smoke-in in Toronto. It reminded me of a conversation I had with some friends a couple of weeks ago.
Take general estimates of the Canadian drug trade - let’s assume about $18 billion/year. Now say that legalization and lower business risk would [...]
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 [...]
Selfish vs self-interest
An excellent post crossed my path today from the blog Adam Smith’s Lost Legacy.
I’ve always been meaning to read more of Adam Smith’s two seminal tomes - The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations - but have so far limited myself to chunks from [...]
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 [...]
But I tried really hard. Honest.
From the Post comes an article about a highly entertaining study that shows the level of entitlement of university students. Ellen Greenberg from UC Irvine polled 400 undergrads and developed some conclusions from the results. From the article:
Ms. Greenberger’s study reveals that students who are academically entitled are more likely to engage in academic cheating, [...]
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 [...]
O’Rourke on how “the movement” blew it
P.J. O’Rourke writing in the Weekly Standard as usual delivers in a libertarian bent with highly engaging and only slightly hyperbolic prose. Writing about how the US conservative movement (in my parlance: libertarianism) blew it over the past many years. I aspire to write as cleanly and here are a few choice quotes:
“After the events [...]
Blood donation incentives
Also from Vox comes a paper by Nicola Lacetera and Mario Macis that describes the impact of incentives on the willingness to give blood. The most interesting thing I saw was related to symbolic (non-monetary) awards:
for the symbolic rewards, they also appear to increase donation frequency, but only when the prizes are awarded publicly and [...]
Lower pensions equals more children
From Vox comes a summary of a paper by Vincenzo Galasso:
According to the “kids as consumption good” theory, affected individuals should have lower fertility, since – due to the reforms – they have lower lifetime income and can thus only afford to “consume” fewer kids. The “old age security” motive suggests instead that affected individuals [...]
Read today
Michael Shermer continues his Folk … series with an easy to read installment on Folk Numeracy, covering statistics and confirmation bais.
Thomas F Cooley writes in Forbes about the need for Barack Obama to reaffirm US support for NAFTA.
Rwanda decides that French is no longer going the primary education language in the country - noting that [...]
