Stephen Gordon

The first ⁦Coalition Avenir Quebec leadership debate between ⁦@BDrainvilleQc⁩ and ⁦@CFrechette⁩ is taking place in a former church L’Espace Saint Grégoire. Secularism is not on the list of themes today. ⁦@CoaIitionAvenir⁩

I spend way too much time on social media debunking "economic slop" promulgated by lawyers pretending to be economists, so I built Show Me the Model: a tool that uses AI to check whether the economic reasoning in an essay actually holds up. showmethemodel.io Give it a URL or paste some plain text, and the tool flags hidden assumptions, internal inconsistencies, and other problem areas, and tells you how a real economist would think through the issue. Right now, it has 4 "personas:" macro, trade, IO/price theory, and labor. The tool first figures out which persona is right for the job, and then uses a parallelized prompt scaffold specific to that persona to process the source text. Here are some example outputs based on some essays that triggered me hard: Citrini Research's viral essay on how AI could trigger a self-reinforcing financial crisis rivaling the GFC: showmethemodel.io/#/results/2ez3… American Compass on the harms of trade deficits: showmethemodel.io/#/results/kOvt… @oren_cass on why Built-to-Rent should be banned: showmethemodel.io/#/results/OXjr… American Compass on the "China Shock:" showmethemodel.io/#/results/dJM7… @michaelxpettis on why China's trade surplus reduces global output: showmethemodel.io/#/results/C8OT… Try it yourself at showmethemodel.io. You'll need to bring your own API key (OpenAI or Anthropic), and a typical analysis costs $0.50–$1.50. It's super preliminary and will probably break on you. I'd love feedback about both the functionality as well as the quality of the output.

Why not both?

@MarcLevesqueEco Am greatly enjoying the prospect of blaming an increase in inflation on the cancelation of the carbon tax.

@MarcLevesqueEco OTOH, the victory will be short-lived. We can expect inflation to jump back up in April as the cancelation of the carbon tax rolls off the y/y measure. x.com/stephenfgordon…

It shouldn’t take too long now before the Liberals try to take credit for this morning’s CPI data. I bet we’ll hear something like « our plan is working ». Reminder: Mark Carney doesn’t control inflation. The Bank of Canada does (to some extent…).

@ZyoBitcoin L'emploi aux deux secteurs - privé et public - est en hausse depuis janvier 2025 www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/fr/cv!…

@stephenfgordon Combien de jobs sont payés par le gouvernement?

« Quand je me regarde je me désole, quand je me compare je me console »

Entrevue avec Patrick Gonzalez, mon collègue à ULaval

Real weekly earnings increased during 2025, but the rate of growth looks like it's slowing down.

Today’s GDP data are a good case where it’s misleading to just focus on the headline number. In both Q3 and Q4, GDP growth was dragged down by huge inventory adjustments (shaving more than 4 percentage points off annualized GDP growth in Q4 and more than 2 percentage points in 1/

If federal PS staff cuts actually happen, I'm sure they'll be carried out with the same level of diligence and attention to cost-benefit ratios that went into the federal PS staff increases of the last 10 years.

@Bentheblacklab @PatriciaTreble And back! That's an extra day.

@stephenfgordon @PatriciaTreble It is actually only 4 hours North of Gros Mourne. Northern Peninsula is worth the trip.

Just booked a visit to St John's and to Gros Morne National Park! #bucketlist

@jbennett1304 Car rental has been booked, thanks for the tip. I guess that it's not like on the mainland, where cars can be easily moved from one region to another if demand exceeds supply.

@stephenfgordon Two tips: 1. Get your rental car booked now if you need one. 2. There are some very helpful Facebook groups that can provide you with lots of info.

@Sam1lyon Thanks! There's a tableland tour on they day we'll be there, and I've bookmarked the Ferryland lighthouse picnic website. Looks good!

@stephenfgordon 2 syggestions: Do the tour of the tablelands in GMNP with the parks canada ranger. Bizarre Martian landscape, wonderfully brought to life by the guide. And book a lighthouse picnic down in Ferryland while you're in St John's. Worth the drive.

@PatriciaTreble No, too far to go in the time we have. Newfoundland is big!

@stephenfgordon Ohhhh, a perennial Top 10 trip for me, too. Are you going to L'Anse aux Meadow?

VLAN DANS LES DENTS

Area quisling has thoughts

Trying and failing to imagine Poilievre doing something similar. He'd be terrified of alienating the quisling vote.

@VincentGeloso I wish I could ask my Acadien grandfather

@stephenfgordon Pain au chocolate is what I expect Acadians to use. I can ask my mother though, she is Acadian

Huh. In Quebec, it's «chocolatine». Don't know what the Acadians use.