I was walking from Union Station to the University of Toronto about 8pm this evening, which is apparently when the homeless start settling down for the night on Bay street. I found this very surprising my first time in Toronto a couple of years ago, I wasn't expecting such a visible homeless presence.
However, what I found particularly strange today was that the people who had set up a sleeping spot had uniformly chosen highly visible spots, typically the middle of the sidewalk in front of a major building. It seems to be it would be preferable to find a more secluded spot on a number of fronts: noise, chance of being dislodged by a policeman, but perhaps it reduces the chance of being robbed while sleeping? A form of silent protest?
What variables enter into this optimization problem? Given the repeated nature of the game, it seems unlikely that these people are away from their maxima. Can anyone think of more compelling reasons to sleep directly outside of the TD building instead of in a park?
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
Links
Leading off, solid labour force news. Can I be one of the cool bloggers and say "green shoots" as well?
Freakonomics asks how to optimally divide the rent of a shared house and proposes some rather uneconomic methods, when a Rochester student already figured out this problem for his job market paper. Paper here. (He went to Texas A&M.)
EnvEcon reiterates the point that debating carbon tax versus cap-and-trade isn't that important relative to implementing either over a much-less-desirable policy. I had a New Years' resolution not to nitpick at the differences.
Rats more rational than humans. What you wouldn't expect is that William Easterly starts from there to segue into a warning about the dangers of data mining. I, for one, cannot explain why there should not be a standard algorithm for tackling any econometric problem.
Freakonomics asks how to optimally divide the rent of a shared house and proposes some rather uneconomic methods, when a Rochester student already figured out this problem for his job market paper. Paper here. (He went to Texas A&M.)
EnvEcon reiterates the point that debating carbon tax versus cap-and-trade isn't that important relative to implementing either over a much-less-desirable policy. I had a New Years' resolution not to nitpick at the differences.
Rats more rational than humans. What you wouldn't expect is that William Easterly starts from there to segue into a warning about the dangers of data mining. I, for one, cannot explain why there should not be a standard algorithm for tackling any econometric problem.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Lessons
Okay, because I can talk about this subject with a degree of legitimacy now.
I remember reading some sort of 'guide to graduate study in economics' a year or so ago, written by some people in the UC system. I don't really remember much, except one line. "In grad school, you are judged by the fruit, not the sweat, of your labours." Okay, I'm paraphrasing a little, but that's pretty close. Ir's incredibly true.
Don't stay up until 5am trying to fix your code so the robust standard errors on your weird model match up with the textbook's to the fourth decimal place when the first two already match. It's just not feasible to do everything and remain sane, so setting priorities becomes extremely important. You don't want to become the person who lives out of their office working 90-hour weeks. Memorizing the proof to show that the set of essential finite games under the sup metric is residual is just not worth it.
In particular, a crucial lesson I'm still working on learning is being able to put a wall between economics and leisure. I remain terrible at resolving to take the morning off and put in a decent rest of the day. Often I will just blankly click around the internet until lunch while fretting about what work I have to do, at which point I start an internal debate on whether I've taken any time off. This is not a good way to spend time.
Okay, math. The importance of mathematical preparation decays throughout the first year. There were very few new mathematical techniques introduced in the second semester. (Though the first micro II class was a little freaky when the prof claimed the Riesz representation theorem was "standard off-the-shelf" stuff we should know.) The first term, preparation helps you a lot. Math for economics, mathematical statistics, Bellmann programming. If you've seen them before, it makes a big difference. I can show you my <50% on the mathematical econ midterm early last October for proof.
What is much more important than being exposed to lots of high-level techniques is 'mathematical sophistication'. This gets thrown around a lot and it's hard to define. Conditional on being told "use a second-order expansion here to derive blah blah blah", it's not difficult to mechanically go ahead and solve. But staring at a problem you've never seen before under severe time constraints, the real skill is to recognize that a Taylor expansion is the preferred method of attack. (And since any problem on a final exam has probably not been seen before...)
Yes, this is correlated with exposure to high-level materials, but not perfectly. I don't know how to acquire this talent, and it's not something I'm particularly great at, but it's crucial. Being really comfortable with the material at the level of Rudin is a lot more important than having been in a course that worked through a lot of weird results in functional analysis.
After this, everything else I could talk about becomes a lot less important and/or obvious, if what I said already wasn't. Stay as healthy as possible. Spend as little time thinking about money as possible. Don't be a moron in social situations with your classmates. Try to remember why you're doing it all in the first place.
I remember reading some sort of 'guide to graduate study in economics' a year or so ago, written by some people in the UC system. I don't really remember much, except one line. "In grad school, you are judged by the fruit, not the sweat, of your labours." Okay, I'm paraphrasing a little, but that's pretty close. Ir's incredibly true.
Don't stay up until 5am trying to fix your code so the robust standard errors on your weird model match up with the textbook's to the fourth decimal place when the first two already match. It's just not feasible to do everything and remain sane, so setting priorities becomes extremely important. You don't want to become the person who lives out of their office working 90-hour weeks. Memorizing the proof to show that the set of essential finite games under the sup metric is residual is just not worth it.
In particular, a crucial lesson I'm still working on learning is being able to put a wall between economics and leisure. I remain terrible at resolving to take the morning off and put in a decent rest of the day. Often I will just blankly click around the internet until lunch while fretting about what work I have to do, at which point I start an internal debate on whether I've taken any time off. This is not a good way to spend time.
Okay, math. The importance of mathematical preparation decays throughout the first year. There were very few new mathematical techniques introduced in the second semester. (Though the first micro II class was a little freaky when the prof claimed the Riesz representation theorem was "standard off-the-shelf" stuff we should know.) The first term, preparation helps you a lot. Math for economics, mathematical statistics, Bellmann programming. If you've seen them before, it makes a big difference. I can show you my <50% on the mathematical econ midterm early last October for proof.
What is much more important than being exposed to lots of high-level techniques is 'mathematical sophistication'. This gets thrown around a lot and it's hard to define. Conditional on being told "use a second-order expansion here to derive blah blah blah", it's not difficult to mechanically go ahead and solve. But staring at a problem you've never seen before under severe time constraints, the real skill is to recognize that a Taylor expansion is the preferred method of attack. (And since any problem on a final exam has probably not been seen before...)
Yes, this is correlated with exposure to high-level materials, but not perfectly. I don't know how to acquire this talent, and it's not something I'm particularly great at, but it's crucial. Being really comfortable with the material at the level of Rudin is a lot more important than having been in a course that worked through a lot of weird results in functional analysis.
After this, everything else I could talk about becomes a lot less important and/or obvious, if what I said already wasn't. Stay as healthy as possible. Spend as little time thinking about money as possible. Don't be a moron in social situations with your classmates. Try to remember why you're doing it all in the first place.
Why does the NHL prefer Phoenix to Hamilton?
Dunno. The court filings say because it "unreasonably restrains competition in violation of the antitrust laws".
Can't say I buy that. Moving a team from a monopoly position in Phoenix to compete with the Leafs hardly sounds anticompetitive. In fact, I have no idea how antitrust laws even come into play here, because it's all the same league. Do the Leafs have that much sway in the overall league?
Presumably the NHL has got to like the fact that a team in Hamilton probably wouldn't lose the $20 million the Coyotes lose. The only thing that I can think of is a continued effort to grow the game south of the border would be helped by the Coyotes staying put. Am I missing something?
Can't say I buy that. Moving a team from a monopoly position in Phoenix to compete with the Leafs hardly sounds anticompetitive. In fact, I have no idea how antitrust laws even come into play here, because it's all the same league. Do the Leafs have that much sway in the overall league?
Presumably the NHL has got to like the fact that a team in Hamilton probably wouldn't lose the $20 million the Coyotes lose. The only thing that I can think of is a continued effort to grow the game south of the border would be helped by the Coyotes staying put. Am I missing something?
Monday, May 4, 2009
Back in the fray
Whee, blogging. I haven't done this in awhile. Anyway, I'm finished exams. Summer vacation stretches forward, I have a serious playoff beard, and it would probably kill my grandmother to observe the state of my apartment. Will do some roundup posts of the first year in the near future and get back to econoblogging.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Immigration and Inequality
David Card, perhaps the preeminent practicing academic economist holding a Canadian passport, was here today to give the annual McKenzie lecture, titled, well, "Immigration and Inequality". Fairly interesting. Basically, it argues that high school dropouts and high school grads with no postsecondary are perfect substitutes to employers, and grouping these categories together makes the education profile of immigrants match up with the education profile of Americans. So you do some econometrics and as that hypothesis suggests, American wage inequality is basically unchanged relative to the counterfactual of no immigration. Ungated working paper here.
However, as the guy sitting to my right with a zillion AERs kept gossiping to me about during the speech, the identification strategy wasn't being bought into all that much. Basically, it revolved around using the past history of immigrants to migrate to ethnic enclaves to IV for the supplies of different skill levels of labour with wages on the left hand side, since presumably immigration responds to economic opportunity, i.e. wages.
Anyway, it was nice to get to a seminar. Hausman gave a talk last Friday that I slipped into as well, extremely authoritative in front of an audience. I hear he's vicious from the audience. Next year should bring a lot more of these things, I'll probably be at all the macro bits. I'll talk about courses for next fall post-exams, which start Monday and end the next Monday.
POSTSCRIPT: No disrespect to David Card, but the most memorable part of the presentation was watching two 20-something graduate students muck with the control panel for the lights unsuccessfully, prompting 90-year-old Lionel McKenzie to come down to the floor and set the lights perfectly in approximately two seconds. Pretty good.
However, as the guy sitting to my right with a zillion AERs kept gossiping to me about during the speech, the identification strategy wasn't being bought into all that much. Basically, it revolved around using the past history of immigrants to migrate to ethnic enclaves to IV for the supplies of different skill levels of labour with wages on the left hand side, since presumably immigration responds to economic opportunity, i.e. wages.
Anyway, it was nice to get to a seminar. Hausman gave a talk last Friday that I slipped into as well, extremely authoritative in front of an audience. I hear he's vicious from the audience. Next year should bring a lot more of these things, I'll probably be at all the macro bits. I'll talk about courses for next fall post-exams, which start Monday and end the next Monday.
POSTSCRIPT: No disrespect to David Card, but the most memorable part of the presentation was watching two 20-something graduate students muck with the control panel for the lights unsuccessfully, prompting 90-year-old Lionel McKenzie to come down to the floor and set the lights perfectly in approximately two seconds. Pretty good.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Terrible think tank reports, a neverending series
Stumbled across a story this morning on the "substantial benefits" Canadians derive from their tax-funded public services. Tracked down the report hoping to get some chuckles out of the cost-benefit methodology. But no, it wasn't that simple. It's also probably a bad sign when the lead author's biography mentions their construction of the "gas gouge meter", something on which I have blogged previously, instead of any professional or educational qualifications, but I digress.
You can look at it if you like, but let me distill it for you: "redistribution is awesome!"
Sure, you can think that the Canadian income distribution is not "fair", whatever that means. However, that's an entirely personal and subjective opinion. The authors probably realized that at some point and figured out that maybe it would be better if they had some numbers to argue their point, e.g. consider the title: "Canada's Quiet Bargain: The benefits of public spending".
Reading that, you'd think the authors would argue that government spending has some benefits, right? This seems like a logical implication. But you'd be wrong. To quote:
Yes, we are starting a study to demonstrate the benefits of public services by assuming that the benefit of public services are zero.
As such, the entire study is nice graphs illustrating that households with lower incomes derive more benefits from public services than the taxes they pay, because in our progressive taxation scheme, the rich pay a disproportionate share of the taxes to fund said services. As such, a majority of Canadians derive (their number is 80%) net benefits from governmental tax-and-spend.
Factually, they're right. But I can do one better. If we collectively decide there's one person nobody really likes, we can drag them out back, lynch them, and redistribute their assets to everyone else. By my calculations, 33,617,546 of 33,617,547 Canadians - that's a whopping 99.999997% - will be better off! Clearly, what a great policy.
The point I'm trying to make here is when economists talk about 'net benefits', they mean 'a potential Pareto improvement', that is after the implementation of policy X, there exists a potential redistribution such that everyone is better off than before the policy. In the report and in my ad absurdium, no such possibility exists, so economists are typically not comfortable using the term 'benefits' to describe the effects of redistribution.
Further, I'm not trying to argue that progressive taxation is a bad thing (I don't think it is at all) or that there aren't lots of legitimate public goods the government should provide (there are), but arguing that we're collectively somehow better off by reallocating the pie is both wrong and short-sighted. Remember, redistribution has costs - see any introductory microeconomic textbook for a primer on the deadweight loss that occurs when taxation distorts incentives, nor are taxes free to collect. So under the assumption that government services are valued at cost, then taxation unambiguously makes us collectively worse off, not better.
Population clock here. Lynching that one guy is probably an even better deal now!
You can look at it if you like, but let me distill it for you: "redistribution is awesome!"
Sure, you can think that the Canadian income distribution is not "fair", whatever that means. However, that's an entirely personal and subjective opinion. The authors probably realized that at some point and figured out that maybe it would be better if they had some numbers to argue their point, e.g. consider the title: "Canada's Quiet Bargain: The benefits of public spending".
Reading that, you'd think the authors would argue that government spending has some benefits, right? This seems like a logical implication. But you'd be wrong. To quote:
[W]e are following the convention in public accounting of valuing public services at their cost. To the extent that public programs are supported by a cost-benefit analysis, our implicit assumption is that the net benefit from public services is zero[.]
Yes, we are starting a study to demonstrate the benefits of public services by assuming that the benefit of public services are zero.
As such, the entire study is nice graphs illustrating that households with lower incomes derive more benefits from public services than the taxes they pay, because in our progressive taxation scheme, the rich pay a disproportionate share of the taxes to fund said services. As such, a majority of Canadians derive (their number is 80%) net benefits from governmental tax-and-spend.
Factually, they're right. But I can do one better. If we collectively decide there's one person nobody really likes, we can drag them out back, lynch them, and redistribute their assets to everyone else. By my calculations, 33,617,546 of 33,617,547 Canadians - that's a whopping 99.999997% - will be better off! Clearly, what a great policy.
The point I'm trying to make here is when economists talk about 'net benefits', they mean 'a potential Pareto improvement', that is after the implementation of policy X, there exists a potential redistribution such that everyone is better off than before the policy. In the report and in my ad absurdium, no such possibility exists, so economists are typically not comfortable using the term 'benefits' to describe the effects of redistribution.
Further, I'm not trying to argue that progressive taxation is a bad thing (I don't think it is at all) or that there aren't lots of legitimate public goods the government should provide (there are), but arguing that we're collectively somehow better off by reallocating the pie is both wrong and short-sighted. Remember, redistribution has costs - see any introductory microeconomic textbook for a primer on the deadweight loss that occurs when taxation distorts incentives, nor are taxes free to collect. So under the assumption that government services are valued at cost, then taxation unambiguously makes us collectively worse off, not better.
Population clock here. Lynching that one guy is probably an even better deal now!
Monday, April 13, 2009
Collateral
Wrote Geanakoplos: “Who can remember the interest rate that Shylock charged Antonio? But everybody remembers the pound of flesh that Shylock and Antonio agreed upon as collateral."
The post is overall somewhat ignorant on just how much literature there had been out there on the importance of collateral and leverage in real economic effects, one canonical piece that comes to mind is Kiyotaki-Moore (1997) JPE "Credit Cycles", predating anything mentioned in the article. The Kocherlakota piece I mentioned the other day also generates bubbles through collateral-based effects.
Macroeconomists do generate a lot of good ideas, however it's often difficult to tell that they are good until after something blows up. Correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am), but if we accept the housing price bubble was a major contributor to this whole mess (as opposed to the notion that the weird-acronym-finance-jazz would've spontaneously combusted anyway), I'm hard pressed to think of other postwar macro events in developed countries where asset prices and household debt played a large role.
POSTSCRIPT: It's the Merchant of Venice, in case you were wondering.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Updates
Given that there are only three micro classes left before finals, even I can calculate that blogging has negative expected value. I want to put a post up at Macleans about some of the fraternity hijinks I've seen with the nice weather breaking out, particularly a bunch of drunken guys hitting tennis balls off beer bottles with sand wedges. Security didn't let that go for long, to be fair.
Lost the basketball match to the profs 17-11 in a forty-minute game. Yes, we're collectively that bad - and it's a heck of a lot easier to play defense than offense. Hoping for revenge in volleyball on Tuesday.
Had to read a 2009 working paper for macro, feels good to be that current. Returning to MWG to finish micro, feels like easy street. Metrics remains the letdown, but I'll supplement that with the Wooldridge/Imbens summer course in Toronto before the CEA conference. Just have to grind out three weeks and it's all over. Not that I have anything to do over summer. Not that that's a bad thing.
Lost the basketball match to the profs 17-11 in a forty-minute game. Yes, we're collectively that bad - and it's a heck of a lot easier to play defense than offense. Hoping for revenge in volleyball on Tuesday.
Had to read a 2009 working paper for macro, feels good to be that current. Returning to MWG to finish micro, feels like easy street. Metrics remains the letdown, but I'll supplement that with the Wooldridge/Imbens summer course in Toronto before the CEA conference. Just have to grind out three weeks and it's all over. Not that I have anything to do over summer. Not that that's a bad thing.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Tidbits
From Reason. Good for some chuckles, but not much else:
You may have noticed Newfoundland recently abolished interest on student loans; I know a fourth year who just diverted a scholarship from loan repayment towards entertainment purposes on the basis of the decision.
I'm trying to formulate an idea on the equity premium puzzle (or lack thereof, now that long-term bonds performed as well as equities over the last fifty years, though that won't stick, I hope) and the option value of being able to leave the market at any time, but I can't piece the strings together and don't have the time to poke through the literature. I'll write that down for summer.
The flyout went well. Nine people showed up, one more than last year, giving the students a chance to consume wings and beer on the department's dime. What else can one ask for?
What would happen if Uncle Sam applied for a loan at his local bank?” What sort of deal could he expect to get on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage?
...
The final credit score was an unimpressive 645, or “fair.” The authors’ conclusion: “If Uncle Sam wanted to buy a house, he would get a rate of 7.836% for a 30 Year Fixed rate.” That technically “would put the United States in the subprime category.”
You may have noticed Newfoundland recently abolished interest on student loans; I know a fourth year who just diverted a scholarship from loan repayment towards entertainment purposes on the basis of the decision.
I'm trying to formulate an idea on the equity premium puzzle (or lack thereof, now that long-term bonds performed as well as equities over the last fifty years, though that won't stick, I hope) and the option value of being able to leave the market at any time, but I can't piece the strings together and don't have the time to poke through the literature. I'll write that down for summer.
The flyout went well. Nine people showed up, one more than last year, giving the students a chance to consume wings and beer on the department's dime. What else can one ask for?
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Budget 2009
Here are the budget highlights, here are the actual estimates.
EDIT: And here is the budget thrown into wordle.
Firstly, I highly recommend that you (at least the Newfoundlanders) take the time to poke through the estimates, at least the first 18 pages. They're almost distressingly readable. I don't expect this level of clarity in any financial document, let alone a provincial budget.
This is what oil prices and Ottawa do to Newfoundland:
2008-09 total revenues: $8,069,353,000
2009-10 total revenues: $5,348,371,000 (estimated).
I have no solid knowledge of the ins and outs of the equalization agreements with Ottawa, one practically needs a degree in the subject. But it's a big budgetary hole to fill, which is where the $750m deficit steps in. Of that 5.35 billion or so, 1.26 billion stems from offshore royalties; the budget estimate is $50/bbl.
We paid $146,508,000 into equalization, or approximately $300 per Newfoundlander (but still win in terms of provincial side deals, with triple that coming back from the 1985 Accord).
It will cost $24 million to run the legislature this year - up 20% from last year's $20 million. Should I expect news stories about this? Education spending is also up 20% from last year.
Government is spending a quarter-billion on something called "resource development". Any ideas what that is?
Servicing the debt still costs a half-billion a year, but this has got to be a monumental improvement relative to a few years ago when we had $4billion more in debt and interest rates were considerably higher.
It should be made clear that we're having a party on the back of the oil money. I hope that it doesn't end, but that's unrealistic. It's an excellent party, and we're even being fairly responsible about it by taking some good chunks out of the debt. But the level of spending growth is way, way unsustainable and barring a ton economic development somewhere outside the oil patch, it will eventually come home to roost in the budget. That could easily be twenty years down the road, which is a long time, but I feel like it would be pretty inexcusable to leave the oil patch behind with a provincial debt still on the books.
EDIT: And here is the budget thrown into wordle.
Firstly, I highly recommend that you (at least the Newfoundlanders) take the time to poke through the estimates, at least the first 18 pages. They're almost distressingly readable. I don't expect this level of clarity in any financial document, let alone a provincial budget.
This is what oil prices and Ottawa do to Newfoundland:
2008-09 total revenues: $8,069,353,000
2009-10 total revenues: $5,348,371,000 (estimated).
I have no solid knowledge of the ins and outs of the equalization agreements with Ottawa, one practically needs a degree in the subject. But it's a big budgetary hole to fill, which is where the $750m deficit steps in. Of that 5.35 billion or so, 1.26 billion stems from offshore royalties; the budget estimate is $50/bbl.
We paid $146,508,000 into equalization, or approximately $300 per Newfoundlander (but still win in terms of provincial side deals, with triple that coming back from the 1985 Accord).
It will cost $24 million to run the legislature this year - up 20% from last year's $20 million. Should I expect news stories about this? Education spending is also up 20% from last year.
Government is spending a quarter-billion on something called "resource development". Any ideas what that is?
Servicing the debt still costs a half-billion a year, but this has got to be a monumental improvement relative to a few years ago when we had $4billion more in debt and interest rates were considerably higher.
It should be made clear that we're having a party on the back of the oil money. I hope that it doesn't end, but that's unrealistic. It's an excellent party, and we're even being fairly responsible about it by taking some good chunks out of the debt. But the level of spending growth is way, way unsustainable and barring a ton economic development somewhere outside the oil patch, it will eventually come home to roost in the budget. That could easily be twenty years down the road, which is a long time, but I feel like it would be pretty inexcusable to leave the oil patch behind with a provincial debt still on the books.
Fourth-quarter macro
After a disappointing eight weeks wrangling with business cycle models that were predominately conceptualized before I was born (King/Plosser/Rebelo, Hansen/Rogerson indivisible labour, etc), the final stretch of macro is looking pretty good. Subdivides into labour market frictions, financial frictions, and growth. The latter uses Acemoglu's new textbook, the former two are based on much more modern papers than the business cycles bit. So far we've gone through Mortensen/Pissarides in considerable detail. I enjoy it.
Also, the prospective first-years will be visiting campus tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. Free food on the department dime, reminder that it will be summer soon, etc.
I promise a post with some content soon~!
Also, the prospective first-years will be visiting campus tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it. Free food on the department dime, reminder that it will be summer soon, etc.
I promise a post with some content soon~!
Monday, March 23, 2009
Seal hunt economics
With the seal hunt kicking off this week, I felt like I'd drop in a few facts.
The DFO tallies the value of seal landings. About $8million in 2008, $31million in 2006. It is unclear how this number is calculated. Is this the commercial price? Retail price? Does it include value-added for processed pelts or flipper pie? I suspect that "landed value" means no.
There are claims that it costs the government of Canada a lot of money to oversee the hunt, maintain medical services for sealers, etc. There appear to be no credible references here. A common number thrown around by animal rights groups is that the hunt costs about $20million of government money to run. The DFO maintains it does not subsidize the hunt. There has certainly been no direct subsidy since 2001. There is certainly some government cost associated with the hunt.
Both the DFO as linked and Greenpeace concede that there are no reliable methods of linking changes in seal population to changes in cod stocks.
I will endeavour not to get mixed up in any of the non-economic issues, though it is clear that a large part of the world either derives disutility from the seal hunt, derives utility from decrying the seal hunt, or some convex combination thereof. If it the former, there is a possibility for a Coasian bargain, i.e. the rest of the world pays off Atlantic Canada to stop the hunt/transport the seals somewhere else. If the latter dominates, then it is optimal for the hunt to continue. You may take the fact that no such bargain has ever approached the table as you will.
The DFO tallies the value of seal landings. About $8million in 2008, $31million in 2006. It is unclear how this number is calculated. Is this the commercial price? Retail price? Does it include value-added for processed pelts or flipper pie? I suspect that "landed value" means no.
There are claims that it costs the government of Canada a lot of money to oversee the hunt, maintain medical services for sealers, etc. There appear to be no credible references here. A common number thrown around by animal rights groups is that the hunt costs about $20million of government money to run. The DFO maintains it does not subsidize the hunt. There has certainly been no direct subsidy since 2001. There is certainly some government cost associated with the hunt.
Both the DFO as linked and Greenpeace concede that there are no reliable methods of linking changes in seal population to changes in cod stocks.
I will endeavour not to get mixed up in any of the non-economic issues, though it is clear that a large part of the world either derives disutility from the seal hunt, derives utility from decrying the seal hunt, or some convex combination thereof. If it the former, there is a possibility for a Coasian bargain, i.e. the rest of the world pays off Atlantic Canada to stop the hunt/transport the seals somewhere else. If the latter dominates, then it is optimal for the hunt to continue. You may take the fact that no such bargain has ever approached the table as you will.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Feeling small
It's mildly depressing that the entire economy of Canada ($1.3 trillion) fits inside the US budget deficit ($1.7 trillion USD). It's not even close, there's hundreds of billions left over to chew up half of Africa or Sweden or something.
Makes it really hard to argue for coordinated international fiscal stimulus - if Canada went for a stimulus plan far more ambitious than pretty much anyone is calling for, it would barely constitute a rounding error in the US deficit.
Makes it really hard to argue for coordinated international fiscal stimulus - if Canada went for a stimulus plan far more ambitious than pretty much anyone is calling for, it would barely constitute a rounding error in the US deficit.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Environmental fact of the day
Since at least 1307, when King Edward I banned the burning of coal to protect his citizens’ “bodily health,” governments have regulated the release of pollution into the air.Here's the paper. Upon reading this, I immediately thought that the Romans. must've had something to this effect, but I can't turn up anything on google, and pieces like this suggest there simply may not have been.
Also joined the local NCAA pools that have circulating in the econoblogosphere. I was 97.4 percentile last year, despite having never watched a televised basketball game, mainly by overwhelmingly playing the higher seeds.
I will also be representing the graduate students in basketball as the annual spring sports contests kick off here in Rochester. Profs versus students, basketball, volleyball, soccer, softball, american football. The betting odds are on the professors.
EDIT: We've finally managed to bump wikipedia from the first google result on 'stackelberg follower'! Thanks everyone.
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