A portion of the Shell Albian Sands oilsands mine is seen from an overlook near Fort McMurray, Alta..Jeff McIntosh
A roundup of the best economic posts on the Web
More sophistication, please
In a weekend post on Economy Lab, University of Alberta business professor Andrew Leach took the Liberal Party to task for its failure to explain the details of its cap-and-trade plan, which was burried on page 46 of the election platform. Leach warned that this failure would allow others to define the proposal. Sure enough, The Wild Rose Party labelled it NEP 2.0 (National Energy Policy). He followed-up late Monday with a post on his blog:
"I would love to write a long post in this space and say that they are wrong. I would love to say that this policy will be good for Alberta. I would love to be able to talk about how it recognizes the critical role of Alberta's energy and resource industries in Canada, and will not seek to disadvantage Alberta (and by extension Canada) to score short term political points. ... I'd love to say all of that, but I can't because I simply don't know what the policy will do because I don't know what the policy is. ... The right reaction, and the one taken by Saskatchewan Premier Wall, is to ask for clarity, not to jump to conclusions and scare tactics."
How big is India's demographic dividend? Evidence from the states
From VoxEU:
"When an economy's working-age population rises, so can its growth rate -- a result known as the "demographic dividend". Using state-level data from India, this column finds that its demographic dividend has already been substantial. It played a key role in India's accelerating growth since the 1980s and will add 2 per cent to annual income growth for the next two decades."
Another from VoxEU:
What is the size of the multiplier? An estimate one can't refuse
Few things divide the economics profession more than this question: How much economic activity does $1 of government spending generate? This column provides a new angle. Looking at local councils in Italy between 1990 and 1999, it examines variation in budgets due to the removal of funds by central government if mafia involvement is suspected. It finds that the fiscal multiplier starts at 1.4 and rises to 2.0.
The servant problem: In search of the lost battalion of America's unemployed
Lewis Lapham in Huffington Post:
"From the tone of the conversation, I can imagine myself at a lawn party somewhere in Fairfield County, Connecticut, listening to the lady in the flowered hat talk about the difficulty of finding decent help.The framing of the country's unemployment trouble as an unfortunate metastasis of the servant problem should come as no surprise. The country is in the hands of an affluent oligarchy content with Voltaire's observation that 'the comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.'
When gadgets betray us: The dark side of convenience
From the Atlantic, with a hat tip to Andrew Coyne:
"The premium movie playing on Adam Laurie's hotel room TV screen may not necessarily be one he paid for, perhaps not one intended for his room at all. One night out of boredom, Laurie said, he became interested in his hotel room's TV remote handset and, in the process of exploring it, gained access to premium services, to other guests' accounts, and to the hotel's main billing server."
The last gasp - For Big Tobacco, South-East Asia is the final frontier
From The Economist:
"Within this region, Indonesia (population 238m) and the Philippines (about 96m) are the golden geese. Indonesia, one of the world's least regulated markets, is one of few Asian countries not to have ratified the World Health Organisation's treaty on tobacco control. Cigarette advertising is rampant. One in four children aged 13-15 smokes.:
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