Dr. Halis Murat Yildiz from TMU will be presenting his paper: On the Design of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (with Martin Richardson and Frank Stahler) on Tuesday, April 1st from 2:00pm to 3:30pm in GSB 306. Please join us!
Department News
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Visiting Speaker (March 25)
Dr. Christine Neill from Wilfrid Laurier University will be presenting her paper: Intergenerational Education Transmission: Patterns in Indigenous and Non-Indigenous People in Canada on Tuesday, March 25th, from 2:00pm to 3:30pm in GSB 306. Please join us!
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Visiting Speaker (March 18)
Dr. Tilman Börgers from the University of Michigan will be presenting his paper, Diversity, Disagreement, and Information Aggregation on Tuesday, March 18, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in GSB 306. Please join us!
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2025 Economics Spring Courses
Whether you want to jump on the fast track to graduation, reduce next year’s course load, satisfy a program requirement or pick up an elective, Brock’s Department of Economics is offering a wide array of Spring courses to help you advance your area of study and explore topics of interest.
Course Spotlight: Economic Development (ECON 2P17)
ASY – ASYNCHRONOUS ONLINE
Do you have an interest in global affairs and a desire to pursue development work in emerging markets? In this course, you’ll examine issues of income inequality, poverty, trade and economic growth from a developing world perspective.
- Study how factors such as education, urbanization, agriculture and international trade affect economic development.
- Explore trending issues such as the realignment of global trade, the impact of the World Bank and the IMF, and emerging trading blocs.
- Analyze different growth models and the historical emergence of today’s underdeveloped nations.
Prerequisite(s): ECON 1P91 and 1P92 but these can be waived. Please send override requests to Indra Hardeen at [email protected]
This course may also be of interest to students in Political Science, LawPlus and Business.
If you’re thinking about switching to ECON, get a head start this spring! All the required second year courses are being offered including ECON 2P21, 2P22, 2P30 and 2P90.
Other Spring ECON Courses
- ECON 1P91: Principles of Microeconomics
- ECON 1P92: Principles of Macroeconomics
- ECON 2P21: Intermediate Microeconomics I
- ECON 2P22: Intermediate Macroeconomics I
- ECON 2P30: Foundations of Economic Analysis
- ECON 2P90: Introduction to Econometrics
- ECON 2P91: Business Econometrics with Applications
- ECON 3P04: Money and Banking II
- ECON 3P92: Forecasting Using Time Series Data
Learn more about our Spring courses.
Registration opens March 5!
For more information or to register for Brock’s Spring/Summer courses, visit brocku.ca/springsummer
Categories: News -
Visiting speaker (March 11)
Dr. Derek Messacar from Memorial University will be presenting his paper, “Telework and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Canada,” co-authored with Tahsin Mehdi and René Morissette, on Tuesday, March 11, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in GSB 306. Please join us!
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Visiting speaker (February 4)
Professor of Economics David Ong from Jinan University-University of Birmingham Joint Institute will be presenting his paper, “Gender differences in the mating and cross-productivity effects of competitiveness on partner income,” co-authored with Ga Hye (Rosalyn) Jeon, on Tuesday, Feb. 4 from 2 to 3:30 p.m. in GSB 206. Please join us!
Categories: Events -
Prof’s public health research reaches U.S. Congress
Assistant Professor Taylor Wright was recently cited in the Economic Report of the President, transmitted to the United States Congress in January 2025 by President Joe Biden before he left office.
When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, Wright was curious about possible indirect effects of policy changes related to lockdowns. In 2021, with co-authors Abel Brodeur and Nik Cook, he published “On the Effects of COVID-19 Safer-at-Home Policies on Social Distancing, Car Crashes and Pollution,” in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
In the paper, the authors contrasted counties in the U.S. that used different approaches to public health measures implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic, studying rates of air pollution and car collisions in different locations both during the policy and after measures such as lockdowns were lifted.
“We saw a 25 per cent reduction in car crashes and a 25 per cent reduction in pollution levels, with both pollution and collisions were lower in places that had more remote work,” says Wright. “We also saw that pollution stayed persistently lower than it was before in those areas after lockdowns were lifted, but car collision rebounded a bit after mobility was reintroduced.”
Four years later, the findings were used by The White House to inform future discussions on the shifting labour landscape.
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Visiting speaker (November 22)
Sam Norris (UBC) will be joining us on Friday, November 22nd from 11:30am-1:00pm in GSB306. Sam will be presenting his paper “Mobile Crisis Response Teams Support Better Policing: Evidence from CAHOOTS” (with Jon Davis, Jadon Schmitt, Yotam Shem-Tov, and Chelsea Strickland).AbstractThis paper studies the use of mobile crisis teams—a non- uniformed pair consisting of a mental health worker and a medic—as either a substitute or complement to traditional police units responding to 911 calls involving mental illness, homelessness, addiction, and other non-dangerous situations. We evaluate the longest-running mobile crisis response program in the U.S., Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets (CAHOOTS) in Eugene, Oregon. We find that a series of expansions of CAHOOTS into new areas and times reduced the likelihood that a 911 call resulted in an arrest, and had the long-term benefit of reducing the number of follow-up 911 calls from the same address. However, CAHOOTS often responds to the same calls as the police, acting as complement rather than a substitute. The reduction in arrests likely reflects CAHOOTS’ role in de-escalating tense situations and resolving incidents without coercive measures. After the initial expansions, additional CAHOOTS capacity is used mostly for calls that would otherwise go unanswered. We conclude that crisis response teams play an important role as a complement to the police, rather than only acting as substitutes. Further expansions are likely to have only limited effects on reducing police responses
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Visiting speaker (November 18)
Tianyi Wang (U Toronto, NBER, IZA) will be presenting his paper, McCarthyism, Media, and Political Repression: Evidence from Hollywood. Please find the paper attached and the abstract below. The presentation is taking place on Monday, November 18th from 2:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. in PLZ410.AbstractDemagogues have existed throughout history, yet their impact on individuals and society remains little understood. We study a far-reaching episode of demagoguery in American history. From the late 1940s to 1950s, anti-communist hysteria led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and others gripped the nation. Hollywood was a prime target, with hundreds of professionals in the industry being accused of having communist ties or sympathies. To study the Red Scare in Hollywood, we assemble a unique collection of data on individual and film characteristics, spanning the period 1930-1970. We show that the anti-communist accusations targeted progressive personalities with dissenting views. Implementing a difference-in-differences design, we find that accused actors and screenwriters experienced a significant setback in their careers that lasted a decade or more. Beyond the effects on the accused, we also document a decline in progressive films during the McCarthy era. We provide suggestive evidence that this shift in film content made society more conservative, using newly-digitized data on movie theaters across US counties. Areas with greater movie exposure saw increased Republican support in presidential elections after the onset of the Hollywood Red Scare. Our results highlight how demagoguery can suppress civil liberties and reshape political preferences in society.Categories: Events -
Visiting speaker (November 4)
Marco Cozzi from the University of Victoria will be presenting his paper, “Optimal Capital Taxation with Incomplete Markets and Schumpeterian Growth”, next Monday, November 4th, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM in PLZ410. Please find the abstract below. Join us!
Abstract
In this paper, I characterize quantitatively the optimal capital income tax rate in an OLG economy with uninsurable income risk, incomplete markets and endogenous Schumpeterian growth. Contrary to the most recent literature, I find that it is virtually never optimal to tax capital. Under the optimal scheme, the highest proportional tax rate on capital is found to be less than 0.2%. The reason for this result lies in the reduced GDP (and wage) growth rate stemming from a higher capital tax rate. In General Equilibrium, the interest rate rises, and the increased cost of capital reduces the endogenous rate of innovation, leading to a negative response of the growth rate. Although the equilibrium effect on the growth rate is found to be quantitatively modest (approximately half a percentage point), it still has a first order consequence on welfare. The results show that moving to the optimal income tax schedule entails large welfare gains, approximately 5% in consumption equivalent. These large effects are also explained by a large reduction in the monopolistic distortions: in the intermediate goods sector, the mark-up over the marginal costs falls by more than 10 percentage points. The results are robust along a number of dimensions, including the specification of preferences.
Categories: Events
