Mike's Economics Blog

I have been having a fun back-and-forth discussion with Peter Klein of Organizations and Markets on using tort-based approaches to reduce pollution. In Mike and Me on Externalities Peter ... Read More

Although the U.S. experienced a rise in real GDP Canada was not so lucky. From The Canadian Press: Canada's economy shrank by 0.1 per cent in the first three months ... Read More

Mike, I think you mischaracterize Argument 1. The relevant comparison is not the efficiency of carbon taxes relative to other taxes, but relative to alternative institutions for dealing with pollution ... Read More

A great debate between Robert Driskill - Why Do Economists Make Such Dismal Arguments About Trade? and Greg Mankiw - On The Case For Free Trade. Both pieces are ... Read More

A post on the Tax Policy Blog hilights what I believe to be the biggest drawback to Pigouvian taxes: UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh explains why California's proposed 25% tax on ... Read More

We teach at AD-AS (aggregate demand/aggregate supply) model in economics-based courses at Ivey, despite the fact that not everyone is a fan of the model. The model does have ... Read More

Source: AFP. See, I knew I was smart not to take this bet!

I show up number one on McCain's browsing history. Now if only I had an article by that name... H/t: Mary Shomon of Thyroid Disease at About.com.

A really terrific graph at Angry Bear showing how the run-up in oil prices between 1970-1980 looks almost identical to the run-up in oil prices between 1998-2008. See: Oil ... Read More

From the Inquisitive Mind: The New Peak Oil: Peak Demand. An important reminder that the Marshallian scissors have two components - supply and demand. And no, oil is ... Read More

I was beginning to typecast myself as a dour curmudgeonly old-before-his-time economist with my recent rants about the Coase theorem. So I was delighted this morning to see this: There ... Read More

Eclectecon takes the bait: The Coase Theorem holds ONLY if transaction costs are low or zero. They clearly are not in the case of air pollution. Exactly. So on the topic ... Read More

According to Janet Yellen, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank: "The 1970s were a horrible period. If there's one thing that has to be very high priority, we don't ... Read More

Felix Salmon - How Unleaded Gasoline Slashed the Violent Crime Rate: ...The main result of the paper is that changes in childhood lead exposure are responsible for a 56% drop in ... Read More

I tend to think of the deadweight loss associated with high tax rates being due to substitution effects. However, if you ask an MBA student about why taxes hurt ... Read More

From the Wall Street Journal: Some clarity comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent federal agency that tried to quantify government spending on energy production in 2007. The ... Read More

But I beat my goal, so $100 will not be going to the sources of your choice. Results under the cut: My goal: This is the week of truth. For the ... Read More

I just finished teaching a 3-day all-day "boot camp" macroeconomics course to 60 MBA students. One topic that came up a few times was what would happen if NAFTA ... Read More

This might be the least compelling argument against carbon taxes, but it is one that gets repeated ad nauseam. From Will Wilkinson: So in order to estimate the optimal pigouvian ... Read More

Every day when I open the paper there is an article like this: Some See Oil At $150 a Barrel This Year: Oil's seemingly unstoppable surge has led some analysts to ... Read More

500+ Economists Endorse Marijuana Legalization Cannabis will be raised to a class B drug with a maximum five year jail term for users... H/t: Fark

I have spent most of my adult life in academia and my best friend has spent most of his life in the military. Our work environments have, I believe, ... Read More

With talk that Ontario will soon become a "have not" province there has been a great deal of discussion about what the high value of the Canadian dollar is doing ... Read More

This is the week of truth. For the seven days between May 1 and May 7, I need to have an average body fat percentage of under 18.23%. ... Read More