EclectEcon

Is it appropriate for the university to bar the tax authorities from receiving information about a student's class schedule?

I received the following notice from an associate dean a couple of days ago:

It has come to my attention that Canada Customs and Revenue Agency has approached an instructor in a large first year course to provide information about a student's examination schedule so that the student could be served with papers, presumably at the examination. (CCRA was clearly fishing. The student in question is not enrolled in that instructor's class.)

There are NO circumstances under which any information about students should be given out to persons outside the university. If faculty or staff receive inquiries of this type, they should direct the questions to the Office of the Registrar.

Does this sound weird to you? Why wouldn't the tax authorities go directly to the registrar in the first place? And if they had already been rebuffed by the registrar, how would they go about selecting various professors for their fishing expedition? Do you think maybe this was a collection agency or something similar?

As I was growing up, we used to wander in these woods a lot. It was here I learned to identify wintergreen plants — we were able to eat the entire plant and enjoy the wintergreen flavour.

I had never seen wintergreen growing naturally anywhere else until recently, when we were visiting Beck and Ron at the Blue Heaven horse farm in Southern Nova Scotia. Here are some photos of a few of the plants.

Along the Bay of Fundy, licenses for lobster fishing sell for about $750,000 for the right to set around 350 traps. Add to the price of a license, the costs of a boat, traps, etc., and it looks as if the financial investment in a lobster fishing business is around $1million.

In that region, the lobster boats are allowed to set their traps during about four months of the year. During that period, they make a LOT of money, but it has to be enough to cover their labour costs (for the hands that go out with the boat), fuel, and the opportunity costs of the financial investiment.

Lobster fishing is not easy work. There's good money to be made, but whatever is made must cover the implicit costs of the owner's time and capital. Just to cover all these costs, a lobster fisher would have to gross roughly $150,000 - $200,000 a year. That's a LOT of lobster!

The licenses have the effect of de facto creating property rights to lobsters, thus reducing the problem often caused by The Tragedy of the Commons. Without these licenses, there would be over-fishing and many fewer lobsters available in the future. Because of the creation of these property rights, and because the transactions costs for buying and selling the licenses are low, the licenses quickly find their way to the lobster fishers who use them most efficiently (a la The Coase Theorem). Without these licenses, there would be considerable misallocation of resources in the lobster fisheries.

But the restriction on supply via the creation of these property rights also creates massive rents to be earned by those who have the licenses. If the licenses sell for $750,000, the rent earned on a license must be somewhere between $50 - $100K per year, depending on the other costs and risks involved. Quite frankly, if I had that kind of money, I think I'd rather put it in an ETF.

Digression: I have decided after several tries that I really don't care all that much for lobster. The experience of eating one can be great fun among friends, but the taste itself doesn't do much for me. To be honest, I'd prefer a double-burger with cheese from Wendy's.

If you ever decide to visit The Hopewell Rocks, we highly recommend that you stay there for two nights and a full day so that you can see the rocks at both high tide and low tide. The contrast contributes tremendously to one's appreciation of the rocks.

We also recommend that you consider staying at the Innisfree Bed & Breakfast, where we stayed during our visit. Innisfree is run by Alan and Elaine, who moved there about 3 years ago, throwing over their jobs in Orangeville and Toronto, because they like sea-kayaking so much. Also they have a real knack for hospitality.

The rooms we stayed in were large, and the B&B was immaculately clean. We are not necessarily positively inclined toward B&Bs, but this one was special. Alan greeted us and helped us get settled in our rooms. Then he gave us tidal charts and explained how to get the most out of our visit to the rocks. They also lent The Interpreter a pair of Wellies to wear down on the shore (Ms. Eclectic and I had our hiking boots with us for the trek).

The breakfasts at Innisfree were terrific. Fresh local produce, including some of the best, dark maple syrup we have ever tasted. We also arranged for Alan and Elaine to prepare and provide an evening meal for us while we were there. It was at least as good as any you might have at a high-end restaurant.

During the peak of the tourist season, Innisfree is often booked up. Also Alan is a kayak guide, leading kayakers through the Hopewell Rocks during high tide. They also make their own jams and woolen products, and they have a gorgeous set of gardens. These folks work hard!

Innisfree has what Alan calls "country cable", meaning their televisions receive only two channels. What a throwback to my childhood (except these are in colour)! It is equipt with WIFI, which is great for someone like me who is a borderline internet addict.

The home is quite close to the entrance to The Hopewell Rocks (perhaps a ten-minute walk if you are in good shape), but walking to the rocks from there might really take about a half hour or so for most people; we drove.)

When we first arrived at Innisfree (during a friggn blizzard! in late April!), Ms. Eclectic said, "Now this is what a bed and breakfast is supposed to be like." We were saying the same thing two days later when we left.

Innisfree has a 4-star rating from Canada Select. We found on our trip that all 4-star places were great places to stay. The Canada Select ratings were far superior to anything provided by CAA/AAA.

During our recent trip to The Maritimes, Ms. Eclectic, The Interpreter, and I visited The Hopewell Rocks, an amazing geological site along the western edge and near the top of the Bay of Fundy.

The rocks are red sandstone aggregates, but the tides in this part of the Bay of Fundy are among the highest tides in the world (sometimes greater than 40 feet!), and the movement of the tides has eroded portions of the rocks to leave wonderful, awe-inspiring rocks along the coast and shore.

We went to the rocks one morning at low tide so we could walk along the shore among the rocks. Here is a famous one, the Lovers' Arch (as usual, click on a photo to see it larger and in better resolution):


And here are some others. The one on the left made me think of those tubes of Pillsbury biscuits that you can (could? I haven't had them for years) buy from the refrigerator case at the grocery store; each "biscuit" is about twice the height of a normal adult. The one of the right reminded me, depending on the angle from which I viewed it, of an old iron or (more majestically) of a Phoenix rising from the earth.











Here is a close-up of the rock type that is in these formations:


It looks as if the bits of granite should be easily dislodged from the red sandstone, but that material is very hard and erodes only slowly, over a long time. The rocks stretch for about two kilometres along the shore, but these are among the better known formations.

That afternoon, we returned to Hopewell Rocks to view the rocks at high tide. Here is the Lovers' Arch (from up on a cliff) at high tide:



The tidal swing was only about 35 feet that day, but look at the contrast between the first photo and this one. Simply amazing!

[h/t to Gail and to The Interpreter for suggesting we visit this place. More acknowledgements to follow.]

There continues to be flooding in and near Fredricton, New Brunswick, and along the St. John River. As I watched the CTV news about the floods, I was struck by the repetition of a scene we have observed so often:

Interviewer: Premier, what is the gubmnt doing to help people who have been hurt by the flooding?

Premier then lists all the gubmnt programmes designed to help bail out people who choose to live in areas of flood risk.

I would strongly support a politician who responded instead,

Nothing. Nothing at all. People harmed by the flood chose to assume risks by living where they did; they knew when they bought their houses that there was no private insurance available for flood damage, and I see no reason for the taxpayers in general to be forced to provide insurance for people who make such risky decisions.

Having said this, my heart goes out to those who took a gamble, bought property that was affected by the flood, and lost, and I encourage their friends and neighbours to band together to provide community support for helping these people get back on their feet, presumably on higher ground. To that end, I am personally making a donation to local charities, and I hope others will do so, too.

It was cold, snowy, icy, damp, yet beautiful when we visited the Bay of Fundy National Park last week. Here's a photo that will be in my next exhibition, this coming November:

On a recent trip through the Bay of Fundy National Park in New Brunswick, we were struck by fields of various burgundy colours (not to mention the frigg'n snow that was falling during the last week of April!). It turns out these are blueberry bushes.

As I have often said, economics can be summarized in four words:

People respond to incentives.

And it makes sense that back before these bridges became historical sites, if people didn't want others to ride their horses on the bridge, they would levy a fine.


The Sawmill Creek Bridge



The signs are clearly reproductions of the originals, but it is fun to see them. Why did it matter so much to the bridge proprietors (typically county gubmnts) whether someone drove or walked their team of horses across the bridge?

I recently read about a place called Zenni Optical, where you can order eyeglasses for unbelievably low prices over the internet. How unbelievable? as low as $8 for a pair of prescription glasses including both the lenses AND the frames. The company appears to be based in California, but that site merely takes the orders and transmits them to China, where the glasses are actually produced.

When I mentioned the place to Jack, he did some searching and found seriously bi-modal reviews of the place. Many people loved them. At the same time, many people hated them. The major complaint is that if the glasses didn't have the right prescription, it is nearly impossible to get glasses with the correct prescription sent in their place; you're just out the money.

Also, they do not produce lined trifocals (though they do produce both progressives and lined bifocals).

Since it is time for me to update the prescriptions in some of my glasses, I decided the potential saving would outweigh the risk of placing an order with them. Also, they charge the same total amount for shipping, regardless of how many pairs of glasses you order at one time. I ordered four pairs of glasses; three different types for me and one for my older son, David Ricardo Palmer. Shipping time was about what they had said it would be — three weeks or a bit less.

1. My son says his glasses are fine. He is not as happy with the style of the frames as he had hoped he would be, and this is one disadvantage with buying glasses online. The site has considerable detail about sizes, colours, and styles, but it is not the same thing as trying the frames in the showroom of an optician.
2. I ordered one pair of glasses with just my distance vision prescription. I refer to these as my "bedtime glasses" because I wear them in bed so I can see the tv, something wearers of bifocals and trifocals cannot do easily because the bottom portion of their lenses is usually for close-up, not distance vision. These glasses were $8, including some frames with spring-loaded temples, and seem just fine. I had nothing special done to the lenses, so these were the very basic model, and they seem like a fantastic bargain. The new prescription is certainly better than the old one that I had been using for over a decade.
3. My intermediate vision glasses (for when I play French horn in the band) are fine, too. The focal point is about 5” closer to me than I might have liked, but that’s a (very minor) problem with the prescription, not the glasses. For these glasses, I ordered thinner lenses, transition lenses (photo-gray) and anti-reflective coating for when we play outside; I also selected some slightly more expensive ($20, not %8) unusual rimless frames. Because I got more expensive frames and extras with the lenses, the price of this pair was about $55. The price for my first two pairs of glasses at even a discount optician in London, ON, would easily have been around $300 - $400 or more. My son's would have been about $350.
4. I also ordered a pair of full progressive glasses, just like the ones I had ordered from a London optician [see my previous posting about shopping for eyeglasses]. As I said earlier, I am not terribly keen on progressives because they have too narrow a field of vision. I ordinarily would get tri-focals, but Zenni doesn’t do trifocals, so I decided to try their progressives. The actual clear-vision “post” is still too narrow to suit me (I have to move my head to read this small computer screen when wearing those glasses), with some intriguing distortions outside the post. But the field of vision with the Zenni progressives is, if anything, a bit wider than that of the progressives I ordered locally. Progressives, transitions, thin lenses, anti-reflective, neato rimless frames - $97. These will become backup glasses.
   
   My local monopolist optometrist would probably charge about $900 - $1200 or more for the same three pairs of glasses; I paid about $170 for all three. So overall I’m pleased. But please note that I have no idea how good the lense material is, and I realize that not everyone has been happy with their orders from that outfit.

Something to decorate the office? [h/t JohnM via BenS]

The article is a bit dated, and I wonder whether it is even an issue any more. But in true Philistine Liberation Organization style, one of the commenters writes,

How exactly does what I watch, what I drink and What I listen to make me inferior to you? I watch NASCAR, sure its dumb, cars going around in circles but I enjoy it and that isnt hurting anyone. What do you watch? Opera? Ballet? Those dont hurt anyone either, but I fail to see how they are better then NASCAR. I drink Bud out of a can, its cheap, I like it, it is made in my state. Does your sipping a cosmo somehow elevate you above me? Are we not both still consuming alcohol? If we drink too much do we not both get intoxicated? As for Limbaugh, well, I dont listen to him either, but Im sure youd blanch at the country station presets on my radio, just as I would skip over your world music or indy rock or whatever you listen to. So we are different and have different tastes, how exactly does that make you better than me?

I have worn tri-focals for about a decade. My eyes aren't all that bad (I can pass the driving test without glasses), but they don't adjust to different distances all that well; hence the trifocals.

After my most recent eye examination, both my optometrist and Ms. Eclectic suggested that I should re-consider getting progressives — trifocals that have no lines on them; they don't have three distinct viewing areas but instead have a progressive change from top to bottom. The two advantages of this type of lens are that (1) there is no line or abrupt change in the prescription from one portion of the lens to another, and (2) by slightly tilting your head up or down you can always find an angle at which things are in focus, regardless of how far they are from you.

The major disadvantage of progressives is that because of the physics/optics, it is impossible to make the lenses so that you can see much to the sides of what you are looking at; the field of vision is very narrow. I had tried progressives when I first got bifocals and hated them because I had to pivot my head from side-to-side to read a newspaper. I was assured, though, that newer designs meant that the field of vision is much wider now.

My local monopolist optometrist initially quoted me a price $530 just for new lenses (I like the rimless titanium frames I'm using and see no need to replace them). They also said that lined trifocals would cost about the same amount. And they guaranteed that if I didn't like the progressives (with transition lenses that go darker in the sunlight and and and, etc.), I could change to trifocals at no charge.

I was about to place the order with them when they called and said they'd made a mistake: the price would be $630, not $530. Okay. That seemed a bit steep, but mistakes happen. [I must say, though, that most businesses that give you a quote honour it even if they make a mistake like this.]

I then asked whether, if I didn't like the progressives, I would get a $100 refund if I switched back to the lined trifocals. The person I was speaking with said she'd never been asked that before, but she checked with others and said that yes I would.

The next day I received ANOTHER phone call from their office telling me that she was new there and had answered incorrectly (despite having checked with others) and that if I ordered progressives, the price would $630 even if I switched back to lined trifocals.

By this time I was beginning to feel jerked around. This optometry company has about five optometrists working in it with offices in two of the local towns. I don't know of any other dispensing opticians within a 20-mile radius of where I live. Due to their locational advantage and their aggressive expansion [shades of Alcoa? or perhaps this is a better reprise of the Alcoa case.], they have some degree of market power. But not so much that they can irritate me as much as they did.

So I went to an optician in London, ON, with my prescription [London is about an hour's drive from the small town where we live, and I go there maybe once every week or two, even when I am not teaching at the university there.]. Their price? $420, with the same guarantee that I can switch back to lined trifocals at no charge if I don't like the progressives. So I placed the order.

I now have the progressives. I'm not thrilled with them. When I get a chance, I will probably return them and get lined trifocals. With these new progressives, not even the entire 12.1" screen on my small laptop is in focus from side to side. The field of vision is still too narrow to suit me.

Next week: Other options when there appears to be a local monopoly: ordering glasses from China.

Many people find that one way to reduce stress in our day-to-day lives is to sit around and pop the bubbles in bubble wrap. One problem is that doing so can be annoying for the people around you; also, once the bubbles are all popped, the stress can accelerate.

So here, courtesy of BenS (he says it is sponsored by Ritalin, but I don't believe him) is a virtual sheet of bubble wrap for you to pop. I find the "manic" version especially satisfying.

What if it were covered by your health insurance plan?

From Health Leaders Media (h/t to Acad Ronin):

South Carolina-based Companion Global Healthcare added three Singapore hospitals to its network. The deal now allows Americans access to medical and surgical services at ParkwayHealth operated hospitals at pre-negotiated, in-network rates lower than those of U.S. hospitals.

The deal between ParkwayHealth and Companion Global Healthcare is a step in the maturation of the medical travel industry, notes David Williams, consultant and cofounder of MedPharma Partners LLC.

“Conceptually, hospitals halfway around the world will now have the same status to members as those just down the street, so that’s a big step,” he said. “It may be a bit of a wake-up call to the local hospitals in South Carolina, putting them on notice that they are facing a broader set of competitors.”

Upon reflection, if the gubmnt insurance in Canada used the savings to pay my way for a holiday in Singapore, I might consider going there for many procedures....but not for such things as lithotripsy, where the flight itself could be pretty agonizing.

Of course this will never happen in Canada, where the gubmnt insurance would face political backlashes if they started shipping patients to Singapore. Educating politicians and voters about comparative advantage seems like an impossible dream, as we witnessed with Obama and Clinton during the Pennsylvania primary.

But in the private sector, look for more of this type of health care in the future, especially among insureres who offer their clients some flexibility in their health care plans.

About a month ago, I mentioned that a student in my introductory economics class had sent me e-mail expressing concern because I frequently said insulting things about York University and the students there. She also objected to my spelling of gubmnt. I never met this student, and I also have no idea what she looks like (she was one of 350 in the class).

Today my teaching assistant sent me the grades for the class. My correspondent earned a mark of 39 (out of 100, not out of 40 as one person wondered). I figure she's a prime candidate for York's Sociology department. Jack figures she's likely to sue me for discrimination.

As I'm sure you have noticed, my blogging has been light (and will continue to be for the next couple of weeks). Life is busy.

Quite frankly, with unemployment rates at or near 60-year lows in the US and Canada, it is hard for me to get worked up about the transfer of manufacturing output from North America to the Asian economies. It looks to me as if we are amazingly flexible and resilient, for the most part, as our economies adapt to the changes in trade and to the reflections of different input prices in different economies. From Cafe Hayek,

From Robert Samuelson's column in [the] Washington Post:
From 1998 to 2007, total non-farm payroll employment [in the U.S.] rose 12 million, and unemployment averaged only 4.9 percent -- despite the 4 million lost factory jobs. In that period, U.S. manufacturing output rose 22 percent.

More evidence of the sectoral shift comes from Steve Poloz:

Autos and parts remain the second-largest export sector for Canada, at just over $70 billion in 2007. Energy exports have leapt into first place, generating revenues of nearly $92 billion in 2007. Close behind autos is exports of services – tourism, financial services, engineering and professional services, and so on – at nearly $68 billion.

I am not much of a coffee connoisseur. I cannot tell the difference between Dunkin' Donuts, Tim Horton's, or any other run-of-the-mill cafe's coffee. I can tell the difference between those standard coffees and the coffee from Starbucks, but I don't much care which I drink. I expect this lack of concern about coffee differences affects my attitude toward coffee drinking. And just so you know this is a true lack of concern, I tend to drink my coffee black, not double-double, which seems to be the favourite of most Canadians.

I drink coffee with a straw. I realize that most take-out coffee comes with a lid that has a tear-up section or pre-punched hole to drink through, and that these lids help prevent spills. But I'm still perfectly capable of spilling coffee when I drink it from the cup. So I stick a straw through the hole.

Some years ago, Ms. Eclectic and I realized that if we drink coffee through a straw, it is much less likely to spill, especially when we are in the car, driving down the road.

And a real bonus of drinking anything through a straw while driving is that your vision of the road is never obstructed. You don't tip the cup or can or bottle up in front of your face when you drink through a straw — you can always keep your eyes on the road and the traffic when you drink coffee (or anything else, for that matter) through a straw in the car (and to head off the likely questions, no I do not and I do not advocate drinking beer while driving, nor have I tried drinking beer through a straw).

Drinking coffee through a straw has become such a habit for me now that I usually drink it that way, even if I'm sitting down at Tim Horton's. Using a straw also avoids the ugly dribbles and stains that run down the side of a porcelain cup.

It has a lot to recommend it, but I still haven't screwed up the courage to ask for a straw at higher end restaurants.

Much of south Texas avoided the housing bubble experienced in other major markets. I suspect that one reason is land is plentiful and the expressway system is well-developed, so people think nothing of living 20-30 miles outside the beltway, where land is quite inexpensive.

But in missing the bubble, one might have expected that Houston would also miss the downturn in the housing market being experienced elsewhere. But, then again, maybe not. This photo was taken earlier this week while I was visiting my son in Houston:

I hope everyone who thinks/thought Earth Hour was a good idea will turn off all their appliances that use electricity between 2pm and 3pm each day for a week in August. In fact, why not turn them off from 1pm until 5pm?

Meanwhile, I hope more of these same people will begin to understand the importance of using time-of-day/time-of-year metering for electricity use, with higher rates during periods of peak use. But watch these same people whine about how unfair it is to jack up prices for the poor and about how unfair it is to jack up prices for things people "need".

The final bonspiel of the season, the Spring Thaw:



Update: The top two photos were from Friday night's draw. The next two are from the Saturday morning draw. Note the morning coat and burgundy (vs. black) cummerbund and tie; the shirt is pink, but was washed out by the flash.



Update #2: And from the evening draw, my Hawaiian dinner jacket.

I had seen these before and was delighted when Judith sent them to me:

My friend Anita lived and now lives in Michigan, but for many years she lived in Atlanta. Here's her reaction to my earlier posting about southern vs. northern women:

I can tell you first hand what the difference is in Northern and Southern gals. After moving south, I had to learn how to dress.

Living in Atlanta for several years and coming back north once a year, my husband and I could plainly see the difference. On one such visit, we landed in Grand Rapids (Michigan) and stayed the night at a hotel. In the morning I looked at the people there having brunch and said, " Look at these women! They are colorless !!" The women were all dressed in mainly solid browns, blues and grays. There was nothing outstanding about the design of their clothing. They only wore a trace of make up and nothing flashy in the way of earrings and jewelry. And plain shoes. It was summer !!! Were these woman not pretty? I think they were not using what they had.

Southern gals just know that if one is good, two is better and three is better yet. They go for the total package look from a very young age and time and effort is put into looking nice. Little girls have ribbons and accessories for their hair and there it starts.

The difference in using make up is night and day. The vast majority of Southern gals wouldn't go anywhere without make up. If the Northern gals put on a light coat of mascara they are doing good. With Southern gals, if the jewery isn't big enough to be seen at an arms length, it isn't worth having including earrings and a diamond engagement ring.

Just sitting in the parking lot of a Michigan Wal-Mart vs the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Fayetteville, Georgia tells it all. Michigan gives gals in jeans, printed tee-shirts, dirty white running shoes, little or no make up or jewery. In Fayetteville, the girl can be wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, but the tee is tucked in, she has a cute belt, her shoes are dressier, her hair is done, she has make -up on and a showy pair of earrings. Is one girl better looking than the other?? All things being equal, the Southern gal is more pleasing to look at.

The shoes that are offered in the South are so much nicer than the ones in the North. While living in Atlanta, I bought some really stylish shoes ...... soft green suede, suede and snake skin heals in eggplant color, multi color leathers of teal, tan and coral with satin ribbon ties. I haven't seen such offered in this area. They most likely wouldn't sell.

To conclude. Southern gals have a more polished look.

Last week, Ron sent me a copy of a mass e-mailing urging people to sign an on-line petition to protest recent changes to CBC Radio 2:

On March 19, 2007, CBC Radio 2 cancelled its excellent evening classical music programming, and the immensely informative Arts Report, and the award-winning Two New Hours. We consider that with these changes the management of our only national public broadcaster has compromised its tradition of providing stimulating and informed programming. We also believe that these changes are not consistent with the CBC mandate and the recent UNESCO treaty on cultural diversity.

The public voices of many dedicated and world-class Canadian writers, hosts, composers, producers and artists are being muted. If the changes are allowed to stand and the trend to continue, the CBC will have entirely squandered its unique capacity to represent the arts, with their inherent qualities of complexity, depth and order.

We, the undersigned, believe the new programming is a retrograde step, one that duplicates material readily available on other stations and compromises the cultural integrity of our public broadcaster. We respectfully insist that the current programming changes to Radio 2 be revisited, and the damage reversed by reinstating the type of intelligent, provocative and informative programming that has long been a hallmark of Radio 2.

My reaction to the changes was a bit different. First, I have always hated the so-called "arts report"; it is usually a collection of special pleadings from the arts community for more gubmnt support.

Second, I have been delighted that CBC Radio 2 has cut waaayyy back on its newscasts. There's no good reason for both CBC1 and CBC2 to run long newscasts, and given the biases of CBC news, the less news the better.

Third, I rarely listen(ed) to CBC2 at night. But I'm certainly willing to give up evening classical music if that means we can also get rid of the arts report.

Further, with web radio and satellite radio, there is far less reason to have the taxpayers of Canada support the performance and broadcast of classical music. CBC2 has traditionally represented a distinctly non-egalitarian redistribution from the taxpayers at large to elitist snobs. But with these technological developments, those of us who want to listen to classical music can easily pay for it and find it ourselves.

While we're at it, why don't we just shut down all of CBC Radio 2 and sell off their broadcast frequencies and equipment?

Related Digression: The television coverage of the World Curling Championships on CBC has been far less than satisfactory.

via Jack,
1. GO TO THE FOLLOWING SITE : http://www.tatuagemdaboa.com.br/


2. TYPE YOUR FIRST NAME ON THE 1st LINE.


3. TYPE YOUR LAST NAME ON THE 2nd LINE.

(Skip your email addresses.)

4. Click on Vizualizar (on your left) and watch what happens.

I didn't take it. I don't know who did, or I would be happy to give credit. Jack sent it to me, and I thought it was fascinating.

Despite how worked-up I get sometimes over the policy proposals of arrogant left-wing elitist interventionists, I have managed to control my language on this blog pretty well:


Created by OnePlusYou

According that website, I have cussed less than 94% of the blogs that have taken the test. Compare that with Rondi who, by comparison, swears like a trooper.

I figure the comments must affect the count. Why else would MR have a score of 6.6%? And there must be something wrong with the cuss counter if Phil got a zero.

From the National Post [h/t to Jack]:

Sex for pay is such a sober exercise that there are Web sites where escorts are reviewed like restaurants. The reviews usually focus less on the sex act and more on attitude, punctuality, conversation and even cuddling. ...

Most of the johns describe themselves as businessmen who regard hiring a sexual partner as a practical means of avoiding the time-wasting, emotionally precarious and often futile practice of working the bars in the vague hope of hooking up. In place of sloppy pick up lines, leaden conversation, booze-greased couplings and regret filled departures, they order up sex like Chinese food. The money assures the act is scheduled to the hour and, most importantly, that both parties are willing and enthusiastic. I know of one man who actually included weekly escort visits as a line item in his retirement plan. It sure beats lawn bowling fees.

When I left a comment at Bill Polley's blog yesterday and then posted more about the Solow growth model, I didn't expect to set off a barrage of discussion, but here's more fuel for the fire.

First, let me make clear (I would hope this would be unnecessary for Bill and Gabriel) that I have had correspondence with both Bill (anyone who takes up curling must be a good guy) and Gabriel off and on over the the past year or three, and I have enjoyed every bit of it. Mike I've known for off and on for over a decade and I have great respect for his intelligence and knowledge. Gavin's blog is a superb resource that helps highlight the insights that Adam Smith's work continues to provide.

Second, the basics of economic growth are extremely important: consumption uses scarce resources that cannot then be available for producing capital goods; saving allows investment, which means more will be available for consumption in the future. We all (I hope) teach something like this in our intro courses when we show that saving today shifts the production possibilities frontier outward for the future.

With those points made, I have two basic responses to Gabriel, Bill, Gavin (who also questions the teaching of the Solow growth model), Mike (who quite obviously did not take a course in law and economics from me) and anyone else who might have entered the fray.

1. Learning the Solow growth model just so I can learn more complex growth models that have little, if any, more relevance for the real world makes no sense to me. I remember all the papers of the late 60s and early 70s about "optimal growth", "turnpike theorems", etc., and they not only seemed pointless then, but I wonder if society would have been better off using them as mulch for people's roses.

2. More seriously, too many policy makers of the 60s and 70s used the Solow growth model (and its progeny) to justify throwing capital at developing countries, saying, "All they need is more capital to get above the minimum threshhold..." and of course the capital was rarely, if ever, used productively in those situations.

The best growth model, if you can call it that, I have seen says to create institutions that provide freedom of contract and let markets work smoothly (for example, see the work by Tim Harford and "Doing Business", which, a la the econ/law literature, emphasizes the importance of reducing transaction costs). We don't need the mathematical growth models; in fact, I wonder if they have a negative social product (other than the sorting mechanisms I mentioned in my original posting).

Recently I posed this question at Bill Polley's blog. I was serious and not trying to be flip. When I was a student, the Harrod-Domar growth models never made a lick of sense to me, and the Solow model seemed sterile and useless. Bill replied,

Same reason we teach the Ricardian model of comparative advantage.

Even though it oversimplifies reality to nearly the point of absurdity, it contains many useful insights that are vital to understanding more sophisticated models and policy discussions.

It introduces a way of organizing one's thinking about the topic at hand. (Growth accounting, in Solow's case... a very important concept.)

It is a touchstone in the literature for an entire field. One cannot be considered to be educated in that field without an understanding of it.

It can be augmented and extended fairly easily to obtain more interesting and potentially useful results.

Despite all that, we know that it is a bit too simple to be the only tool in our arsenal. Indeed, to use it as the only tool in our arsenal would be dangerous.

Would not each of these statement apply to the Ricardian model as well as the Solow model?

Maybe. And Bill sure knows more about this stuff than I do, so he's probably right.

But when I look at countries that have grown rapidly and countries that haven't grown rapidly, it seems to me that things like prices and interest rates, along with institutions, property rights, transaction costs, and entrepreneurship are much more important than exogenous technical change.

Yes the models are are a good exercise. Yes the models are a great seive for filtering the students and putting them through the hoops. But I really don't think the models are worth spending much (any?) time on.

Recently a colleague asked me if I teach anything about growth in my intro course. I replied that I teach nothing explicit about growth theories, but I do teach the Coase theorem and the importance of property rights and transaction costs in understanding exchange and growth.

In contrast, Ricardian comparative advantage lies at the heart of exchange; some would argue it is the only argument we have in favour of free trade. It is indeed based on heroic assumptions, but in many instances these assumptions do not detract from the usefulness of the concept. And at least comparative advantage depends on such basic concepts as opportunity costs and relative prices.

I confess. I have not seen Fitna, the movie. Having read some reviews, I don't really care whether I see it. I doubt if it is a very good movie or a very bad movie. But I'd rather read blogs or watch CSI on television.

If you really want to see it, there are lots of sites hosting it even though threats from Muslim extremists caused LiveLeak to remove it from their site.

Nevertheless....

As when the Danish cartoons caused so much violence among Islamic extremists, I am once again appalled and deeply concerned about the clash between their perceptions of their religion and the heretofore sacrosanct western ideals of freedom of speech. I am equally appalled that Canada's embarrassment to the world, Louise Arbour, has once again spoken out against freedom of the press and in favour of appeasing terrorists. Here is a letter my friend Eva sent Ms. Arbour:

I have just read that you have condemned the movie, "Fitna".

Have you seen it? I doubt it. I have seen it because I took advantage of the opportunity to watch it during the short number of hours it was shown on a web-site. I knew that the time would be short and, of course, threats have been made to the lives of the people who posted the film on the internet and they have been obliged to withdraw the film.

If you had seen it, you would know that the film consists of exact extracts from the Koran. Yes, the verses are very bloody and full of hate, but Wilders didn't invent the verses. What he did was to show that there are powerful, murderous sectors of the Islamic world who take the inflammatory, incitement contained in the verses very literally indeed. The verses were accompanied by newsreel shots of the incitement being carried out in the real world, by Islamic militants, not by Mr Wilders. The newsreel shots were originally broadcast on AL Jazeera, the BBC and other media outlets. You didn't complain then, did you?

Aren't you addressing your moralistic fervour in the wrong direction? Aren't you blaming the messenger and not the originators of the worldwide hate, blood, gore and mayhem? Admit, you are terrified of the true violators of human rights and turn your anger to those who point it out. If you were truly concerned with human rights you would speak out against the atrocities committed in the name of Islamic extremism.

I have moved about a thousand times. Each time I have bought new shower curtains and new shower-curtain rings. You know what? Every single time, the number of rings in a standard package has exactly matched the number of holes in the shower curtain. Amazing co-ordination, wouldn't you say?

Please, please, don't tell me there's some gubmnt regulation requiring that there be a specified number of holes in a shower curtain and the same number in a package of shower rings.

Addendum: See this by Bryan Caplan, pointing out how responsive markets are to minorities' interests. Contrast his piece with the attacks on economic pluralism launched by the elitist, interventionist east-coast liberal establishments who concocted the excess capacity theorem and other travesties that are perilously related to life in the Soviet Union under communism.

I see the sitemeter for EclectEcon just passed half a million. That's the number of separate page views this blog has had since the hit counter was first installed, shortly after I began writing the blog back in November, 2004.

I can't tell for sure, but it looks as if the 500,000th visitor was someone searching the internet, either for the Nude Magic video or for the Nude Curling Calendar.

I have been urging the Cdn gubmnt to stop minting pennies for a long time. When former student, Scoop, saw this, he quickly penned the following press release:

UWO prof supports campaign to scrap the penny
31 March 2008

University of Western Ontario Economics Professor John Palmer today threw his support behind Winnipeg MP Pat Martin's Private Member's Bill to scrap the penny.

"We need to scrap the penny – it doesn't even have value as scrap metal. The simple fact is that prices and incomes are somewhere between 20 and 100 times what they were a century ago, and there is no reason to keep meaningless little coins like the penny and even the nickel around -- they won't buy much, if anything, anyway," Palmer said. "With so few of them used in transactions, and a copper and zinc mines' worth of pennies sitting stagnant in jars, it's time to relegate the penny to its proper place – the history books next to half-penny and the farthing. With the reality of today's economy, the dime is the new penny."

Palmer has been campaigning to get rid of the penny for over two decades. If the penny and the nickel were scrapped, he said it would be easy enough to round prices to the nearest decimal point – or dime.

"The minting of pennies and nickels takes up valuable resources – and mining and smelting of the metals, not to mention the greenhouse gas emissions generated creating and transporting these useless coins, are a burden on the environment," Palmer said. "I am pleased MP Martin has joined the ban the penny campaign – and I hope that all Canadian MPs will see the wisdom of his useful bill to scrap a useless coin."

My prediction, which will probably lose me several friends, is that the Trono (pronounced Trah-nah) Blue Jays will win 79 games this season. Here's hoping that's just pessimism on my part.

Harry Truman is reputed to have once said,

Somebody bring me a one-handed economist! I'm tired of hearing, "On the one hand this, on the other hand that..."

Tyr was a one-handed Norse god,

The t-rune ... is named after Tyr, and was identified with this god., the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name is Tîwaz. The rune is sometimes also referred to as Teiwaz, or spelling variants.

Judging from the rune portrayed in Wikipedia, one wonders if that's all Tyr was missing:

You know those virgins allegedly waiting for the suicide bombers? Here they are in a Google video.

From the Trono Star (h/t to BenS):

Person 3: "What happens, what happens at the Parliament?"
Person 1: "We go and kill everybody."
Person 3: "And then what?"
Informant: "And then read about it ..."
Person 1: "We get victory."
Informant: "And take, uh, Paul, um, what's his name ____. Paul loser."
Person 1: "Paul Martin."
Person 3: "Yeah."
Person 1: "Nah, I wish he had won guy."
Informant: "What you . . . what you talkin' about?"
Person 1: "Now it's the other guy, Harper."

BenS recently asked me about the term "externalities". Here is my reply:

Externalities are the effects imposed on others but not taken into account by the person engaging in some action. The best examples are (1) pollution, a negative externality and (2) personal flower gardens at the front of a house, a positive externality.

In the case of negative externalities, people do too much of whatever it is because they don't consider all the costs they are inflicting on others. In the case of positive externalities, people do too little of whatever it is because they don't consider all the benefits conferred upon others.

A standard policy prescription is to tax activities that generate negative externalities (hence the support by many economists for raising gasoline taxes even higher) and to subsidize activities that generate positive externalities.

Some (many?) people refer to externalities as "market failures", which they are, relative to some idealized and impossible norm. These same people then illogically conclude that "therefore" it follows the gubmnt should intervene in the marketplace (a la the tax/subsidy schemes or other options). Of course such illogic fails to consider the flipside of the problem: gubmnt failure, wherein politicians and bureaucrats create more inefficiencies than they solve.

Applying these prescriptions to ethanol would mean we'd tax the snot out of that junk.

If (a very big if) CO2 emissions cause global warming, then taxing carbon-based fuels might be an appropriate solution. But this type of tax/subsidy scheme might be less efficient than just building dikes and levies. I.e., the tax/subsidy solutions which are standard (first suggested by Pigou, and hence called Pigou or Pigouvian taxes) are not always the best option because they don't consider other possibilities. Ronald Coase first pointed this out in a famous article in 1960, but it was so obtuse that many people have struggled to grasp this point.

Geert Wilders' film Fitna, a critical examination of Islamism and the Quran, is now available on the internet (e.g. see here). For reviews, see this by Eugene Volokh or this from Reuters.

Update: For more, see this, especially see the statment from LiveLeak, which is hosting the video, and see Update III:

I just watched Geert Wilders’ film, Fitna, The Movie. My initial reaction is a yawn. No surprise, of course. ...

Anyone who has seen terrorist propaganda films is familiar with most of the scenes and most of the disgusting conflations of the Quran with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and anti-semitism. Such behavior has been condemned resoundingly among Muslims. Those that use the Quran for illegitimate and criminal ends should be punished by the fullest extent of the law.

What I’m really wondering: is Wilders’ protesting against Islam or the monopoly extremists already have over grainy, low-budget, youtube videos? The only difference I see is that Wilders plays the best of Western classical music — an insult to the legacy of Tchaikovsky — than death chants.

Yesterday, Craig Newmark linked to this article which rates the attractiveness of the women on various university campuses and then ranks the universities from 1 - 50.

As I scanned through the article to which he linked (yes, scanned; I'm old enough that there's no point in lingering), it struck me that the top 10 list includes only southern schools. Further, the schools ranked 11th - 20th are all from the south or from the west coast.

Where, I wondered, are the schools from the Midwest ranked? And sure enough, there were several in the list from 21st - 30th.

Why might the Big Ten and similar schools be ranked so low? To say there are fewer or less attractive women in such schools is not an adequate answer; the question is, if so, why?

Is there a selection bias in the admissions policies of southern schools (submit a photo with your application)?

Is it possible that women who are very attractive prefer warmer climates to show off their attractiveness, whereas those less well-endowed(?) are happy to attend universities where the weather mandates covering up more [with the attendant "I don't much care anymore" attitude by young males when the warm weather finally arrives]? If so, what will be the impact of global warming on these rankings in the future?

Is it possible that the selection bias arises because the women in the Midwest are every bit as attractive as elsewhere but there are fewer photos of them from which to judge because there is less warm weather in the Midwest? [an informal poll of colleagues tells me there's much more cleavage seen at schools in warmer climates, so this possibility has some merit]

Is it possible that the women in the Midwest and North are every bit as attractive, potentially, as the women of the South and West, but they choose to invest less in the raw materials of looks and more in the raw materials of other forms of human capital? If so, why?

Is it possible that there is an inverse correlation between female attractiveness and female intelligence and that the schools in the Midwest are better schools, attracting (!) smarter but less attractive women? and related,

Is it possible that northern men care less about superficial beauty, preferring the inner depths of knowledge and personality [yeah, sure], and hence the women respond to those incentives accordingly?

Or is it possible that southern men care more about superficial beauty, ...?

Or do Northern and Midwestern schools for some other reason attract women who, by the standards of the piece to which Craig Newmark linked, are less attractive?

How would Canadian universities come out in this ranking? Are the most beautiful women more likely to attend schools on the west coast? Rumour has it that Country Club U [aka UWO] in Ontario would do very well in this ranking, though.

Addendum: A radio commentator I happened to hear last evening was very confident that many of the photos accompanying the original article were of models wearing clothing with the school logos. If so, that raises other possibilities, such as:

Are administrators of southern and western schools able to hire better-looking models? If so, why? Is it because better-looking models prefer to live in the south or west coast? And, again, if so, why them and not the less attractive models?

It is amazing/revealing that so many scientists who once accepted the claims that human discharge of C02 into the atmosphere is causing global warming have changed their minds. From the Adam Smith Blog,

A new 'Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change' was initiated stating "that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life." Senator Inhofe’s register, put together by the USA Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, already contains more than 500 scientists who previously endorsed the IPCC views but have meanwhile changed their mind. The sceptics have reached a consensus on four key points:

1) The Earth is currently well within natural climate variability. 2) Almost all climate fear is generated by unproven computer model predictions. 3) An abundance of peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears and, 4) "Consensus" has been manufactured for political, not scientific purposes.

Contrary to expectations the media coverage was excellent – that’s the new momentum.

And let me add that even if those who disagree with the skeptics are correct, it might be cheaper and more efficient to deal with the effects of global warming rather than try to stop it.

Every time I look at the data, it seems pretty clear to me that if aggregate demand is pushed upward, then in the short run the economy will experience reduced unemployment rates and (often with a lag) higher rates of inflation. During such a period, the unemployment rate drops below the natural unemployment rate (or the NAIRU), and that seems pretty much like what the North American economies were experiencing during the past few years. We had unemployment rates lower than we had seen for the past 25-30 years. These numbers make it seem that our economies had been pumped up by the spending supported with loose credit conditions.

We learned in the late 70s and 80s that we cannot sustain these low unemployment rates by continuing to inflate aggregate demand. Eventually the unemployment rates rise back toward their natural rates. This process of having our unemployment rates rise as we slide along the short-run Phillips Curve is not the same thing as an inadequate-aggregate-demand-induced recession; rather, it is a reversion to long-run equilibrium. Furthermore, any attempts to head off this reversion to the long-run are likely to be highly inflationary. Both the Fed and the Bank of Canada will have to be very careful not to over-inflate our economies in a futile attempt to reduce or hold unemployment below the natural rates.

Making things worse, it is likely that the long-run vertical Phillips Curve is shifting to the right (increasing the natural unemployment rate), at least temporarily, as the economies suffer some short-run aggregate supply shocks:

1. The liquidity crisis is not just affecting aggregate demand; it is accompanied by a decline in the production of financial intermediation, a supply effect (cf Tyler Cowen, with thanks to Gabriel Mihalache).
2. Rapid growth in the developing economies has led to a tremendous increase in their demand for commodities. This, in turn, means the prices of these goods are higher for North Americans, which has the same effect as any other supply shock in the economy [h/t to BrianF for this one].

Both of these supply shocks will tend to raise the unemployment rate, at least temporarily (for several years?) above what would otherwise be the natural unemployment rate. And the sad thing is that the central banks will try to deal with them by increasing aggregate demand, but their doing so will not help the unemployment picture much, but will put more upward pressure on the rate of inflation.

From Reuters:

AMSTERDAM, March 23 (Reuters) - A U.S.-based web service, which Islam critic and Dutch right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders planned to use to show his film critical of the Koran, said on Saturday that it had inactivated the site due to complaints.

"This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy," the company said on the site www.fitnathemovie.com.

Wilders, who has given few details about his 15-minute film, has said he plans to release 'Fitna' on the Internet before the end of the month after Dutch broadcasters declined to show it. Fitna is a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife". ...

The film is not so much about Muslims as about the Koran, Wilders wrote in a commentary in Dutch daily De Volkskrant on Saturday. He said Fitna was a last warning for the West.

Wilders had previously warned of a "tsunami of Islamisation" in a country home to almost one million Muslims.

I expect there are other, bigger, faster sites willing to host his film, but if not, let me know and I'll figure out a way to do it on one of the sites I use.

Last week I pondered the extent to which the Canadian dollar (aka the "Loonie") is a petro-currency and wondered why the US price of a Canuck buck wasn't rising along with the US price of oil.

By the end of the week, the US price of oil had dropped considerably, and the US price of a Cdn$ had dropped by approximately the same percentage, suggesting that perhaps the linkage between the value of a Canadian dollar and the price of oil was stronger than it had seemed for several months. And last Friday I received this from RGE Monitor in its daily report:

Canada: Recoupling?

With 75% of its exports bound for the U.S. (whose economic outlook was revised downward by the OECD), Canada seems hard pressed to avoid the effects of the likely U.S. recession. So far, though, terms of trade gains from a strong loonie have boosted domestic demand and offset rising credit costs, and the export and manufacturing slump. But its vulnerabilities have led the Bank of Canada to cut aggressively (100bps since December), even if less so than the Fed. With Canada one of few countries where inflation – even of food – is slowing, it may continue to ease policy rates in the hopes of cushioning the economy. Take a look at: “Canada Decoupled or Not? External Weakness To Infect Domestic Demand” and “Canadian Credit Market Infected By Global Crunch”

How much thought and study does it take to understand the causes of poverty?

Not much, according to The Adam Smith Blog:

There are no causes of poverty. It is the rest state, that which happens when you don't do anything. If you want to experience poverty, just do nothing and it will come. To ask what causes poverty is like asking what causes cold in the universe; it is the absence of energy. Similarly poverty is the absence of wealth. ...

The unusual condition is wealth. This is what changes things. We should ask what are the causes of wealth and try to recreate and reproduce them. When you ask the wrong question, "What causes poverty," you end up with wrong answers. People fall into the trap of thinking that the wealth of some causes the poverty in others, as if there were a fixed amount of wealth in the world and that rich people had seized too large a share of it.

... Instead of trying to take wealth away from rich people and redistribute it, we should be seeking to implement the conditions in which as many people as possible can join in the wealth-creating process for themselves.

Poor countries will not become wealthier because we give them some of our riches. They will climb out of poverty the same way we did, by producing and selling goods and services and by creating wealth in the process.

From Bruce Smith, quoted by the Israpundit:

Criticism leveled at Israel for her response to terrorist attacks by Hamas in the Gaza says more about those who criticize Israel than it does about the legality of the reprisals.

Given the restraint shown by Israel so often when under attack, we should be praising the Israeli gubmnt, not condemning it.

Alex, a student in my Economics of Sports course, sent me this logo, which would be perfect for an economics department hockey team sweater. Maybe for a physics or math department, too.

Back in the days when I thought I might be able to do some acting (how disillusioned we all can be sometimes), I read some plays by David Mamet. I didn't much like them, even though he was revered by many as a great playwright. But, WOW, look at what he has written recently about his transformation (h/t to Salim Mansur, but others have already blogged about this, too):

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

... I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

When utopian schemes fail, we are left to choose from among the feasible alternatives. Within that choice set, once we rid ourselves of our pollyanna-isms, less gubmnt intervention looks pretty good.

I see Mamet mispelled "gubmnt".

Yesterday, the Boston Red Sox voted unanimously not to go to Japan for their opening game against Oakland unless the coaches, trainers, assistants, etc. would be paid what MLB originally promised them. From ESPN [note: the dispute was resolved by mid-afternoon, about an hour after the Red Sox refused to take the field for an exhibition game against the Blue Jays],

"We had an agreement," Curt Schilling, one of a handful of Red Sox players who talked with Major League Baseball on ground rules for the trip, told ESPN's Claire Smith.

"Some of the promises have already been taken away, now this," Schilling said. "As far as the players are concerned, [withholding the coaches' bonuses] can't happen."

''When we voted to go to Japan, that was not a unanimous vote,'' Lowell told the Globe, "but we did what our team wanted us to do for Major League Baseball. They promised us the moon and the stars, and then when we committed, they started pulling back. It's not just the coaches, it's the staff, the trainers, a lot of people are affected by this.

From what the players were saying, it sounded as if MLB was going to be in breach of its contract with the team players and staff. But the MLB breach would have been with the staff and assistants, not with the players, and so I wonder whether the players' refusing to go would have put them in breach. More likely, the trainers and assistants would be viewed as essential complements for the players, and if they had not gone on the trip (because of the breach), then likely the players could also have refused to go.

But do you really think the refusal to go to Japan would have had "profound global ramifications"? Ordinarily, I think Jayson Stark [sidebar column here] has a lot of valuable insight, and I enjoy reading his columns, but this is a bit over the edge:

I have no doubt that these guys completely understand the profound global ramifications of this trip. Nobody needs to explain to them that this isn't just another road series on their pocket schedules. This is an event of major significance for the sport, for the franchise and for the nation they're about to visit.

It is probably obvious, but I decided to blog this after the Red Sox refused to play the Blue Jays but before the resolution, and especially after I read Stark's column, which I found amusing (though clearly prescient).