Housing supply is one of those topics that a lot of people can’t seem to agree on. Some people, including annoying city bloggers from Toronto, will tell you that we’re not building nearly enough new housing. While others will tell you that, no, everything is… Read More
All posts filed under “economics”
Le Pen’s voter base: France’s poor rural drivers
The presidential election that is underway right now in France is playing out exactly as one might imagine. The first round of votes took place on April 10, and the second and final round — which is now between Macron and Le Pen — will… Read More
Shrinkflation in the housing market
We all know that inflation is a thing right now. Prices are rising. One way businesses can choose to respond to this is through something called “shrinkflation”, which the Financial Times writes about here. The idea behind shrinkflation is that, instead of just raising end… Read More
Quietly booming tech town
We have all seen these headlines before, so it’s not so under the radar for us. But the New York Times just published this article about Toronto calling it a “quietly booming tech town.” Depending on how you want to measure things, Toronto is now… Read More
Where US students want to live after college
Axios and Generation Lab have something new called the Next Cities Index. The goal is to track US work and culture trends through people’s geographic preferences. For their first cities index, they asked over 2,100 students in the US, on two separate occasions, the following… Read More
Rebalancing retail sector taxation
Back in 2006, online shopping in the UK represented about 3% of total retail sales. As of March 2020, right before the pandemic, this number had increased to about 22%. Online shopping then spiked during the pandemic, as we all know, but it has since… Read More
Climate and economy
I have long been interested in the possible relationships between climate and economy. Because my unproven hypothesis is that, given the choice, most city dwellers would probably prefer to hang out on Ipanema beach and drink caipirinhas in the sun than sit in a windowless… Read More
Money as social construct
In Matt Levine’s latest Money Stuff newsletter he talks about how money is really just a social construct. In his words, money is “a way to keep track of what society thinks you deserve in terms of goods and services.” But over the years, we… Read More
Weekend link roundup — Ukraine and gas supply to Warren Buffet and Canadian housing supply
I spent much of this morning reading about and listening to discussions about what’s happening in Ukraine and so, instead of a typical post this morning, I’m just going to share a mélange of links. Monocle 24 Foreign Desk episode talking about Russia’s invasion of… Read More
Comparing the weekly earnings of Canada’s visible minorities to white people
We just finished up three days of snowboarding and skiing in Tremblant, Quebec and we’re now in Montreal closing out the long weekend. I am arguably Toronto’s greatest fan and supporter, but I continue to admit that Montreal is the coolest city in Canada. In… Read More