individual behavior

Voting (or lack thereof) in May election.
As recent article by Statscan suggests that 7.5 million people didn't vote in the May federal election.The reasons are summarized by the following graphic:
-By rob on 2013-01-11

Taxation for Cultural Change
-By rob on 2013-01-11

E-Commerce in Africa
CBC's radio show Spark had a recent discussion of African E-Commerce (episode 130). Basically, individuals are increasingly using cel phones to conduct business transactions using texting services whereby they are able to communicate their inventories of goods, their demands for goods, and transfer funds between banks and individuals. Without cel phones, these transactions involved individuals traveling from village to village with their goods, incurring significant time costs while traveling between.-By rob on 2013-01-11

Do Incentives Affect Fertility? The Case of Quebec
Quebec has been experiencing lower-than-average birthrates for some time. Going back to 1997, the porvincial government has attempted to increase birthrates, the number of monthers returning to the labor force and fathers' involvement in child rearing through a set of policies grouped under the rubric of "Family Policy." A recent episode of the Current discusses these policies and their effects. From the episode:-By rob on 2013-01-11

Countersignalling and the genius of John Cage
There's a paper by Kim-Sau Chung and Peter Eso on signaling when an individual has career concerns. This paper has been around for a couple of years, but this is the first time I saw it applied to music and particularly John Cage's 4'33". From Jeff Ely's Cheap Talk blog on economics and more:
-By rob on 2013-01-11

Health Codes Violations, Single Motherhood, and the Breakfast I had Last Week
I'm currently teaching Economics 349: the Economics of Social Problems. I thought I'd use our department blog to help raise some examples of the types of issues that arise in the Calgary area which relate (even tangentially) to the course. (To those students in the course, some of this stuff may serve as fodder for term papers.)
-By rob on 2010-01-19

Zombie Economics (John Quiggin)
-By rob on 2009-12-15

Alberta Puts Forth New Rules for Pay Day Loans
I wrote previously about the ways in which pay-day loans result in individuals paying more for financial services. Now Alberta has put forth a new set of rule for pay-day lenders. Some highlights:
Starting in September, businesses will be prohibited from charging more than $23 in fees and interest for each $100 borrowed.-By rob on 2009-06-13

Research of Twitter
I was forwarded this post by someone who had read my previous comments on Twitter. Although most social networking sites are dominated by women (i.e., women produce most of the content and are followed by men and women):-By rob on 2009-06-13

Upcoming Fund Raiser in Calgary
I've been doing some research on charitable giving, not looking at the motives as much as the mechanisms organizations use to raise funds. So its in this respect that I'm posting the following regarding an upcoming event in Calgary to raise funds for Janus Academy, a school specializing in the education of children with autism:
-By rob on 2009-06-13