UW Economics Society

Written by: Irina Chen A global epidemic named coronavirus (also known as COVID-19), first appeared in China in early January. As of March 27th, the virus has infected approximately 590,000 and killed at least 27,000 people worldwide. Schools and businesses have been forced to shut down. The global economy has become unimaginably fragile in recent […]

Written by: Hammad Mirza What is Populating Ageing? To understand ageing from a macroeconomic perspective, it is important to differentiate between the ageing of individuals and the ageing of populations. Interest in the ageing of individuals focuses on survival and longevity (i.e. life expectancy within a country), which make ageing a function solely of changes […]

Written by: Mitchell Lowery In all my experience working in the field of economics (admittedly not within the same context as this article), there have been two things that have fascinated me the most. The first – which I will not discuss any further – is trade, and the second is a phenomenon known as […]

The moment is right to discuss plastic use in Canada. Touching all corners of our lives, plastic products, most of which are used only once and thrown away, have been extremely prevalent in recent decades. The majority of this plastic waste ends up in the ocean and threatens the lives of marine creatures, costing billions […]

What Is Happening?   Fall in the industrial production in Germany has landed the nation into recession. As defined by National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, a recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real […]

Poverty has always been holding mankind from achieving its potential. The inability to maintain the basic levels of survival is still high among 1.85 billion people of the world today. Poverty has been rising faster than the economic policies to eradicate them, even when the rich like Bill Gates, donate most of their incomes to […]

The CME Group Inc. is distinguished as one of the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives marketplace. It owns large derivatives, options and futures exchanges in Chicago and New York City using their trading platforms such as CME Globex trading and CME Clearing. CME Globex trading is a global electronics trading platform that enables users […]

What is a Trade War? A trade war happens when one country retaliates against another by raising import tariffs or placing other restrictions on the opposing country’s imports. Trade wars can commence if one country perceives a competitor nation has unfair trading practices [1].

An Article Written by Zuleykha Gasinova As we progress to the last month of 2018, economists and various well-known financial agencies have released their forecasts about economic trends in 2019 and upcoming years. Considering the overwhelming economic and political agenda of 2018, economists have a distinct analysis regarding the U.S and global economy. While some […]

The 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics was awarded to two American Economists, Paul Romer and William Nordhaus, for their work on economic growth theory and the economic impact of climate change, respectively. This article will attempt to scratch the surface of William Nordhaus’ breakthrough contribution to economic modelling of climate changes, or in the […]

An Article Written by Sumedha Jain. On September 30, 2018, big news was made about USMCA, the pending agreement that will replace the near quarter-of-a-century agreement known as NAFTA. Before its intended ratification, knowing what the “historic change” is about, along with its impact on the involving countries compared to its preceding agreement is worth […]

Article Written by Zuleykha Gasimova Introduction Economics of Information is a field of microeconomic theory which studies how the imperfect allocation of information affects economic analysis. If we examine the Neoclassical Theory, one of its main assumptions is that everyone has access to the same information (complete information) and everyone has perfect information about the […]

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics was definitely a “weird” one. One recipient was Dr. Eugene Fama from UChicago, who proposed the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) (which contends that markets are efficient). Yet, on the other hand, professor Robert Shiller from Yale, a leading economist in Behavioural Finance (an area that explores how psychology engenders […]

While the American public (and the rest of the world) watched James Comey make the highest-viewed testimony in congressional hearing history, the Republican-majority House of Representatives passed the Financial Choice Act, a bill designed to repeal and replace much of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2008. At first glance, most of the key principles sound pretty […]

Recently, President Donald Trump announced the intent of the United States to withdraw from the Paris Accord. For some, this was a shock as there was an overwhelming consensus that climate change was, for one, real, and two, that there were time constraints in ensuring our survival as a species. However, what seems to be […]

  Throughout his campaign and first 100 days as President, many of Trump’s proposals have been indisputably controversial. From the 11% decline of the Mexican Peso immediately following the election to the 25% increase in U.S. construction materials, it may seem clear that Trump’s presidency has resulted in increased volatility in the global financial markets. […]

After the surprising result of Brexit, there are more and more doubts about the feasibility and efficiency of Eurozone system. Brexit uncovered major concerns, such as the European single market’s lagging global trading competitiveness, immigration issues, risks on unitary regulations and laws. This event triggered the alarm for Eurozone countries to reconsider whether it is […]

Do you remember when Canada got rid of the penny? There was months of advertising, plenty of time for planning, and thus it was relatively easy to exchange pennies for other forms of money. But many people didn’t bother exchanging, as Canada’s economy is not exactly dependent on the penny, and most people in Canada […]

Since 1945, the world has seen an era of American leadership. Now, with the populist mindset swaying in favor of protectionist policies and the 2008 Financial Crisis still reverberating in the pockets of the public, a new stage has been set with the receding role of the US in international leadership. Reminiscent of, though not […]

Money as we all know is an important unit of account and an essential tool for trade. Recently, there has been great speculation on the benefits of going paperless once and for all. Currency has been the fundamental pillar in our monetary system and has given rise to trade and investment. The reason why speculations […]

Canada’s sharing economy is booming. According to Statistics Canada, almost 3 million Canadians spent over CAD 1.3 billion participated in the sharing economy [1]. Companies like Uber and Airbnb are revolutionizing their respective industries. And with Uber set to enter into British Columbia by the end of this year [2], the impact of the sharing […]

Amid the Trump elections and fake news outrage, a summit was held in Marrakech Morocco dedicated to Climate Change. The summit named COP22 was held in November 2016 and presented a significant reality check for the ambitious goals  that were set by the Paris Agreement. With 2018 as the next major checkpoint, the United Nations […]

In today’s article, we will extend our knowledge of the Simple Linear Regression Model to the case where there are more than one explanatory variables. Under certain conditions, the Gauss Markov Theorem assures us that through the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method of estimating parameters, our regression coefficients are the Best Linear Unbiased Estimates, or […]

Allegedly the most empirical civilization of all time, our Information Age would no doubt serve its audience righteously in their attempts to obtain knowledge. But take a look at the N-gram, a Google search engine that charts the frequency of a word in printed sources over time, for the word epistemology: As the study of […]

After Donald Trump’s surprise U.S. election victory and the Republicans’ full control of the Congress, the markets have reacted and the U.S. Dollar (dollar) has been continually surging – catching companies and investors off guard. The new U.S. administration seems to believe that this is a sign of “global confidence in Trumpism”, but there are […]

The stadium lights are blinding, and the murmuring of the crowd in the stands is amplified into a deafening roar. Yet, your senses have never been more acute. The date is January 29, 2017, and are playing to win your fifth Australian Open championship title in tennis. Millions of people are watching your every movement […]

GMOs have been the centre of a political debate for a long time. Now, a product made in Canada will serve as a major indicator to where that debate is in the public conscience. This debate could open up the floodgates to the GMO market, and result in a major shakeup to the food industry […]

In this era of rising globalization we are learning more and more about the affairs of other nations and how it impacts us at home. The perspective of news outlets that report these issues shape and mould reader’s opinions on foreign affairs. In the past China has isolated itself from world affairs by imposing strict […]

In the previous article, we introduced the motivation behind econometrics and the role it plays in the field of economics. We also briefly discussed the concept of an econometric model, which was essentially an equation that captures the relationship between variables. Today we will leap further into the econometric discussion by examining the most fundamental […]

In sight of the White House, just across from Lafayette Square, lies the US Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) Foundation, which works to educate the public on the positive impacts of business. Such proximity signifies the intimacy of Congressional agenda-setting and its policy priorities with the lobbyists supporting unregulated, Big Business. Since the early 2000s, corporate […]

In 2016, the world witnessed as Venezuela fell into a large-scale economic collapse. For some, this implosion seemingly materialized from nowhere. In revision, its causes could be traced and explained by numerous factors, including economic mismanagement from its government, rigid socialist economic policies, and a fall in oil prices. A combination of the listed factors […]

Last Monday, the IMF improved the outlook for the Canadian Economy [1] – which will be welcome news after a sluggish period since late 2014. The IMF projects that Canada’s economy will grow by 1.9% and 2.0% respectively in 2017 and 2018. Canada is also expected to outperform every G7 country except for the United […]

Central Banks around the world have wrestled with low-interest rates, but nowhere have they grappled with them for longer than in Japan [5]. Investment in Japan as a percentage of GDP has been on a downward trend for more than two decades. To combat these persistent bouts of deflation, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) pioneered […]

The ‘poor, angry, white man’ [1], as some of Trump’s critics would proclaim, was the reason his popularity parades him to electoral victory. If so, what made him poor, what made him angry? As economic uncertainty and political distrust become more prevalent subjects in common dinner table discussion, Right-Wing movements and populist approaches to politics […]

Today, we live in a world where information is at one’s disposal with the single click of a button. The result of this is a growing demand for methods in understanding, analyzing, and modelling data. In economics, we refer to the development and usage of statistical techniques as econometrics. Econometrics begins with an economic question: […]

One of Canada’s biggest news stories in 2016 was the skyrocketing housing prices in Vancouver and Toronto. To get a sense of the scale of the problem, some family homes in Metro Vancouver increased by as much as 40% in one year. According to Demographia, the median household in Vancouver was sold for 10.8 times the […]

Hi Everyone, going to graduate school is a decision many students have to make and it is definitely a tough one. There are many factors that will make up the final decision you make. I thought this would be a good time to share some tips for graduate school applications. Remember to come out to […]

This post is concerning the importance of related investments, in a series of posts that will cover topics such as forms of investments, strategies and methods. If you have a specific request, email us at econsoc@uwaterloo.ca. In economics, we learn about elasticity in several different forms such as price elasticity of demand, income elasticity of demand, […]

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was implemented in 1994, almost 23 years ago. The agreement was negotiated between Canada, United States, and Mexico to eliminate the majority of tariffs between the countries and to promote the trade of manufacturing, agriculture, and more. Canada and the United States exchange $750 billion each year in […]