Author: Matt

Heinz and Kraft Merger

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In case you missed it over the summer, Heinz and Kraft announced a merger which will turn them into a single Kraft Dinner and ketchup superpower. Heinz’s shareholders, which includes Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway, will now own 51% of the company, while Kraft shareholders take the other almost-half. As with any merger of this size, the Competition Bureau took a look to see whether the agreement should be deemed anticompetitive or fair. Long story short, it was not. But The Curious Econ wouldn’t be The Curious Econ if we weren’t curious about the economic rationale behind their conclusion. The Competition Bureau is of course a government regulator, and as such they are usually pretty tight-lipped about the statistical methods and robustness checks they use in their analyses. What is clear though is that they didn’t seem overly concerned about the merger. To begin their analysis, they examined both companies’ products and determined which ones share the same market. Turns out that only barbeque sauce and salad dressing were deemed close enough competitors to warrant a full …

Dissecting Andy Dufresne’s Shawshank Gamble

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I’ve seen The Shawshank Redemption way too many times. Wayyyyy-way-wayyyyy too many times. You think I care? All I know is that it’s an all-time classic and I’ll continue to flip to it whenever I see it on the TV guide. Has there ever been a more likeable convicted murderer than Morgan Freeman’s character Red? I certainly can’t think of one. Since I’d like to actively try and avoid turning this into a 10 000 word paean on the movie’s greatness, I’ll do a quick summary only and then jump right into our main topic. Before doing so though I suppose I should issue a #SPOILERALERT, although seriously if you haven’t seen it by now you should probably leave the public library where you’re reading this blog from and go back to your home in Inner Mongolia. Okay, let’s proceed. Our main guy Andy Dufresne (Du-Frain, and make sure you say it like Morgan Freeman does) spends most of the movie locked up in Shawshank Prison for murdering his wife and lover, a crime for which he is …

Gender Equality

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$12 trillion – the amount of global GDP growth that could be realized by 2025 if gender inequality were to lessen. That number jumps to $28 trillion if women were to achieve equal labour market status to men. That’s a decent amount of coin.

Education in Senegal

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Development economics has many interesting aspects to it but I find the education facet particularly thought-provoking. Maybe its because education, especially at the primary level, is such a fundamental indicator of progress in third-world countries. Considering that the opportunity for education is not a given, and the quality is even more elusive, it’s crucial that whatever limited resources there are should be allocated as effectively as possible. With that I turn it over to the group of researchers who recently looked at whether or not transferring cash from centralized school boards to specific schools improves the quality of primary education in Senegal. Their basic thought is that local school members, teachers, etc, will have a better understanding of what the schools need in terms of resources. They chose Senegal because of a randomized control trial that took place which allocated a certain number of schools to take part in this decentralized funding program, while another group of schools did not. They proceeded to randomly assign surveys and tests to primary school students, some of who were at …

Some Thoughts on Toronto Transit

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A few weeks ago I had to drive to downtown Toronto from my home in the west end of the GTA (Greater Toronto Area), and it reminded me how frustrating driving into and around the city can be. The main entry point from the west end is via the Gardiner Expressway, an elevated highway that is as unsightly and decrepit looking as it is annoying to drive on. Bumper to bumper, hood to hood, the traffic has undoubtedly gotten worse with each passing year. It’s also falling apart; last year the city announced a 25-year maintenance plan to make sure it doesn’t literally crumble to the ground. So here at The Curious Econ HQ, we’ve been brainstorming some ideas on how to alleviate the traffic, and what the future might hold in store for Toronto transit. Back in 2008, Metrolinx, the organization responsible for not much actually implementing a comprehensive transit strategy for the GTA, came up with their big master plan called The Big Move. This plan included a whole list of forecasted estimates …

Early Childhood Development in Columbia

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Keeping on the topic of development economics, the Institute of Fiscal Studies researched the impact of an early childhood intervention program in Columbia on the development of cognitive and socio-emotional skills in children. This is another example of the “randomized control trial” setup being used for statistical analysis. The program has many aspects but the one the researchers focus on is the part where the mothers of young children are visited once per week to discuss and simply observe parenting techniques. Econometric analysis is used to produce a model that captures the mothers’ investment in their children’s development, as well as a separate model measuring the child’s accumulation of cognitive and socio-economic skills. The parents are split into treatment and control groups, the treatment ones being those participating in the program while the control groups are those not participating, and they observe the changes in the two models. They find that parental investments in material goods leads to an improvement in cognitive skills for the child, while investments in time with children leads to stronger socio-emotional skills. …

Private Sector Investment

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50.9% – The share of total Canadian investment that comes from the private/corporate sector, the second lowest in the OECD behind Greece. For some comparisons to other G7 countries, the US is at 53.8%, the UK 57.4%, Germany 57.8%, and Japan 68.3%. It’d be nice if some of that private money was reinvested into the economy (i.e. JOBS FOR GRADUATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), but hey, those execs need their golden parachutes I guess.

Dogs and the Endowment Effect

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I still remember February 2002 as if it were yesterday. Our family had just gotten a new desktop computer (flat screen!), we had gone on a wonderful one-week vacation to Punta Cana, and the hockey team I played for just won our billionth championship in a row. But towards the end of the month was when the real highlight came, when we brought a beautiful golden retriever puppy named Reilly into our home. Between my sister and I, she was probably more excited about getting a dog than I was. After all, I had never really shown much of an interest in pets. When I was really young I had a goldfish named Goldie (because of course I named it that), but I don’t even remember the day my parents flushed him down the toilet. I think he had effectively murdered my sister’s fish Angel by stealing all her food, so he wasn’t exactly a great guy anyways. My point is that I just wasn’t really into the whole pet thing back then. Reilly changed all …

City Rankings

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1 – The ranking of the city of Toronto (pg 20) in the Economist Intelligence Unit overall city scores worldwide for 2015. Question their methodology all you want, but the reality is you’re just jealous!