A Canadian Econoview

• An Opportunity For A Pharmaceutical Policy Experiment?

  The Toronto Globe and Mail ran a story ($$$ subscription required) a little while back about cancer patients treating themselves with DCA, the drug which, according to reports out of the University of Alberta shows promise as a cancer treatment, based on its effectiveness in lab rats. [...]
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  Posted: June 11, 2007, 5:52pm EDT
  

• From Florida, A Little Bit of Applied Health Insurance Theory

  The South Florida Sun-Sentinel ran a piece not too long ago which illustrated quite nicely a bit of the standard economic model of insurance. The story actually dealt with a decision by Florida State University to require all students to have health insurance - if they don't have it through [...]
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  Posted: June 10, 2007, 8:30pm EDT
  

• US Health Insurance: Identifying Its Problems

  From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, an article which contains some observations which should be kept in mind by anyone thinking about how to reform the US health insurance system. Interestingly enough, it's not an article on health insurance reform - those have a nasty habit of ranging from vapid [...]
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  Posted: June 09, 2007, 9:43pm EDT
  

• Pigou With A Twist

  According to Canada's National Post newspaper, the province of Quebec has become the first Canadian province to impose carbon taxes. But, according to this story the plan has some slightly unusual details.
  
  The story, from the 7 June/07 Post, is by Kevin Dougherty and is headed:

  [...]

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  Posted: June 08, 2007, 3:35pm EDT
  

• Every Little Bit of Evidence Helps

  It's always nice to be able to back up an assertion drawn from theory with evidence, even if the sample size is limited (to 1, perhaps). The Albertan Dr. Al, who blogs at What's Wrong With Health Care provides some anecdotal support for something that I regularly tell my [...]
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  Posted: April 19, 2007, 10:41am EDT
  

• Once Again, We See People Responding To Incentives

  The New York Times ran an article on April 17/07 ($$$ subscription required) on the costs of treatments for drug addicts under New York's Medicaid program. It contains a couple of nice examples of optimal responses to incentives, or at least, individually optimal responses conditional on certain broad objectives.
  [...]
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  Posted: April 18, 2007, 9:55pm EDT
  

• But That's Not What We Wanted To Have Happen

  A bit of evidence, this time from the Wall Street Journal, on the matter of whether cigarette smokers respond to tax-driven price increases. The answer is that they do, but often not in the way the tax increasers wanted them to.
  
  The story ($$$ subscription required) is [...]
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  Posted: March 20, 2007, 6:10pm EDT
  

• Florida Hurricane Insurance Again

  Florida Governor Charlie Crist was in DC in February trying to get support for a national disaster insurance fund - according to Insurance News Net:

  The idea behind the proposed national fund for natural disasters is that policyholders all over the nation would share the risk should a [...]

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  Posted: March 14, 2007, 8:32pm EDT
  

• Labour Supply, Labour Demand and Wages

  Perhaps it takes a guy who's actually involved in the labour market - in this case on the labour demand (meaning job offering, or hiring) side - to explain how markets work.
  
  A piece from the CBC New Brunswick website on 12 March/07:

  Lower unemployment a [...]

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  Posted: March 12, 2007, 6:28pm EDT
  

• Financing Health Care in New Brunswick

  New Brunswick Auditor General Mike Ferguson has just released the second volume of his latest annual report, and from the news coverage I learned something I hadn't known about the way NB funds its health care system.
  
  Let's pull a headline from the Moncton Times and Transcript:

  [...]

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  Posted: March 05, 2007, 11:30pm EST
  

• Middlemen Are Good

  A lot of people take for granted the claim that "eliminating the middleman" is a good thing. they work on the assumption that middlemen make their profit from buying low and selling high - what has been called profit from alienation - without adding any value themselves. In fact, of [...]
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  Posted: March 04, 2007, 6:10pm EST
  

• Easing the Welfare Trap?

  Unusually, I find myself in agreement both with Canada's federal Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty and with a New Brunswick poverty activist. That's not an impossibility, of course, and how statistically improbable it is depends on how you define the event in question - the probability of my being [...]
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  Posted: March 01, 2007, 5:54pm EST
  

• Zero Price and Excess Demand

  What do you get when the government takes it upon itself to supply a commodity at zero price to the consumer? You get a lot of surprised bureaucrats, and headlines like this:

  Demand for English Lessons Outstrips Supply

  
  That particular headline's from a story by Fernanda Santos [...]
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  Posted: February 27, 2007, 4:46pm EST
  

• Terence Corcoran, Demand Curve Denier?

  Terence Corcoran, of Canada's National Post (Financial Post section) newspaper, continued his ongoing, if somewhat sporadic, battle against Harvard economist Greg Mankiw's push for a Pigovian tax approach to reducing gasoline use in a column in the Feb 13 issue of the paper (see also True [...]
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  Posted: February 16, 2007, 2:55pm EST
  

• Just a Little More Fine Tuning Needed:

  The BBC tells us that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is continuing along the path to true socialism, recognizing that there's a bit of economic tweaking required in the follow up to his own version of the Edict on Maximum Prices.
  
  The story's headed:

  Chavez threat [...]

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  Posted: February 16, 2007, 11:16am EST
  

• The Beer Does Not Flow Freely

  For a long time, in Canada, beer could only be sold in provinces in which it was brewed. That's why, for example, you could get New Brunswick-brewed Moosehead beer in Texas and in Australia, but not in Ontario. Things have improved since then, but not as much as one might [...]
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  Posted: February 13, 2007, 11:46am EST
  

• Drug Development Isn't Easy

  The Feb. 11, 2007 Sunday New York Times had an article ($$$ subscription required soon) that's worth taking a look at for what it says about the whole pharmaceutical development process.
  
  You've probably seen the figures which suggest that it costs about $800 million to bring a drug [...]
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  Posted: February 12, 2007, 7:15pm EST
  

• Property Rights In Action

  It's very reassuring when a paper like the New York Times runs a story which not only gets the economics right, but implicitly accepts the economic analysis as being the way the world works. Perhaps the NYT's not doing it consciously; perhaps sometimes it just fits so neatly into place [...]
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  Posted: February 10, 2007, 5:35pm EST
  

• Had They But Known

  The South Florida Sun-Sentinel picks up an AP report out of Venezuela which makes one wonder if there mightn't have been some bit of economic theory, or perhaps one or two bits of historical evidence, which might not have predicted, or at least hinted at, this:

  Chavez [...]

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  Posted: February 09, 2007, 4:32pm EST
  

• Oh Lord, Please Don't Let This Be A Hoax

  Did you ever run into a news story on a scientific breakthrough which you really, really, really, really, really, really hoped would live up to its initial hype, just because it sounded so cool? Well, if not, The Scotsman newspaper has a story which may just fill the bill.
  [...]
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  Posted: February 09, 2007, 2:44pm EST
  

• Yet More On the Efficient Management of Renewable Resources

  What some might refer to as a tendency to harp on about a handful of themes, I regard as taking delight in pointing out how much of what we read in the newspapers can be explained in terms of basic introductory economic theory. In this case, we're back to the [...]
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  Posted: February 08, 2007, 4:25pm EST
  

• A Representative Canadian Health Care Story

  Here, from the CBC New Brunswick website, is a story which is, sadly, a pretty familiar one as far as Canadian health system stories go.
  
  It's dated Tuesday, February 6, 2007, and headed

  Bed shortage delayed 20 surgeries at hospital in January

  The hospital in question [...]
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  Posted: February 08, 2007, 3:20pm EST
  

• It's Getting Easier To Be Green

  At least if you live in a market society. Consider, for example, this Miami Herald article (free registration required) on organic foods.
  
  It's dated 3 Jan/07, written by Susan Salisbury, and headed:

  S. Florida farmers see a fresh profit in organics

  In a market society, of [...]
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  Posted: January 31, 2007, 4:40pm EST
  

• The Bush Health Proposals

  You wouldn't know it from much of the coverage, but George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union speech included two health care proposals. The one that got most of the attention was the one dealing with the tax treatment of health insurance premiums. I'll discuss that one in a [...]
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  Posted: January 24, 2007, 4:45pm EST
  

• Importing Skilled Labour

  Here's a story from the CTV website which is a bit of a twist on the long running "we could solve out doctor shortage problem if we'd only recognize the credentials of foreign trained doctors" theme.
  
  The foreign doctors in this case are Brits:

  The United [...]

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  Posted: January 23, 2007, 6:10pm EST