EclectEcon

Peter Goodman recently referred me to this paper in the Queen's University Working Paper Series. It shows a plot of Japan's Phillips Curve using data from 1980 through 2005. The researchers noticed that if you do a mirror image of the plot, it looks very much like the map of Japan.

I think the same thing is true for Canada. Here is a plot of the Canadian Phillips curve data from 1948 - 1996 (from the Canadian edition of The Economic Way of Thinking):


Careful inspection of the plot reveals that the upper dots represent the arctic islands, and the large gap to the east appears right where Hudson Bay is. For comparison, consider this map of Canada (courtesy of the CIA):



Update: In the comments, Alan wondered whether I was implying with those dots in the upper left that Canada had staked a claim to Alaska to strengthen its claim to the passages in the Arctic Ocean.

I should have made clear that even though I reproduced an azimuthal projection map originally, I had in mind a mercator projection map (the kind
used by Google--who can argue with that authority?), like this:



With this map, it is clear that the higher dots all fall on Canada's islands in the Arctic. There is even a dot in the lower left to indicate Victoria, on Vancouvre Island.

Update #2: There is more confirmation of my hypothesis that a country's Phillips Curve is shaped like the country: Look at the Phillips Curve for the Czech Republic.

Update #3: More confirmation from The Netherlands.

Addendum: the Phillips Curve is named for the famous economist who discovered it, Professor Curve.