Can a service transition help us reduce carbon emissions? The evidence says no.

Yesterday I was reminded of what got me interested in economics. I’ll preface this by saying that I make my living as a substitute teacher in Toronto. It’s not glamorous, but it pays the bills. It gives me time to do research from outside academia. When I’m in high school classrooms, I always browse the posters on the wall. It’s funny what you see. You find things (both good and bad) that you’d never see in institutions of ‘higher learning’.

Contrary to what neoclassical economists claim should happen, economic growth seems to involve less ‘free market’ and more hierarchy.

As societies use more energy, business firms tend to get bigger. Here’s how it happens.

Real GDP is key to macroeconomics. But is it a valid measure of economic scale?

Power laws are everywhere, but hard to grasp intuitively. I discuss some tricks for visualizing them.

If you are an empirical researcher, I have a challenge for you.

I pay tribute to scientists who I think have done excellent empirical research.

In science, being wrong is call for a celebration. Now that you think I’m crazy, let me explain. Science is about the search for truth . Logically, this means we should celebrate when we are right . But here’s the catch. How do we know when we are right? We can’t. Science is about conditional truth. We have ideas that we think are right because they have not yet been proven wrong.

I am skeptical about agent-based models. Here are my thoughts on their problems.