Experience Exchange

UW Economics Society presents some commentary!

Waterloo Economics students you must watch the above video to fully understand the awesomeness I am about to sell you.  Can you imagine not having your Ye's sushi?  Even the iPads are gone?!  Why would the government do this to those businesses and its citizens?

The Argentina government claims to be stimulating local businesses and industries but the article shows at least some businesses and employees hurt.  At the heart of the story is Argentina's trade balance.

What is a trade balance?  What does that have to do with a trade surplus and why is Argentina so interested in holding it?  The video mentions the resulting deficit is structural, what does that mean?  How and why does Argentina use it's surplus to buy fuel?  This seems very close to the idea of "Buy American" except enforced by a government, why does the Argentina government believe its necessary?

There are just so many questions but all the answers and more can be found in a course, ECON 231 Introduction to International Economics!

You should seriously consider taking ECON 231.  If you are really interested in the topics covered in this video you may also want to consider ECON 436 and 488.

My other blog post about ECON 231 Sharing our Loonie. Check it out! 

Sharing our Loonie

A while back there was some talk about Iceland adopting the Loonie.  I read an article on The Economist declaring that few barriers exist for Iceland adopting the Loonie.  Also for the most part, Icelanders were split down the middle between adopting the Euro vs the Loonie.

There is a link back to the University of Waterloo here!  Robert Mundell, famous for the Mundell-Fleming Model we learn in ECON 202, won a Nobel prize for his work on Optimal Currency Areas.  How is this a connection?  He taught here! 

A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

How can one country just adopt our Loonie?  What does this mean for Canada?  Where would we find more information about this?  A great place to start is ECON 231. Ah HA! You thought this article would be enlightening but you were wrong!

I have taken ECON 231 with Prof Bloemhof and I enjoyed it.  It's a bit different than the courses we are used to as university students but experiencing something different, new and exciting can't be all bad, right?  If you want more of the regular flavour I have spoken with Prof Blit and he seems like a cool guy.

So if you are interested in Trade Theory and International Economics ECON 231 is offered every term!

Sources

http://www.economist.com/node/21549967

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimum_currency_area

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mundell