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Professor Dwayne Benjamin’s Summer Playlist

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Professors look forward to summer too! While many faculty don’t take much time off from teaching or research, there is still time to take for a bit of fun. Dwayne Benjamin shared his nostalgia-based summer playlist with the Economics community.

Portrait of Dwayne Benjamin
Professor Dwayne Benjamin

Each year summer vacation can’t come soon enough! It’s start is delineated for me by the Canada Day long weekend and the end of the regular school year. The ebbs and flows of the academic schedule are etched into my mental chronometer (no matter what changes we make to sessional dates).

While it’s been a busy year for all of us, and a restorative summer break is surely deserved, for those of us living in a “four season” country like Canada, summer is intrinsically special and tied to— almost assuredly — idealized childhood memories.

I spent the formative years of my childhood in rural Nova Scotia, with old-school family picnics, trips to the beach, and summer day camps punctuating what was otherwise unstructured and seemingly endless play time with either small groups of friends (bikes and fishing rods), or bigger groups in the neighbourhood (achieving quorum for the larger scale games, e.g. Red Rover). With the idleness and leisure, boredom followed, but it was combined with summer-specific fun which served to restore and recharge me for the school year that followed. [Read more…]

Seeds of Time: In Memory of Professor Emeritus Andrew Murray Watson

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Portrait of the late Professor Emeritus Andrew Watson.
The late Professor Emeritus Andrew Watson, file photo

Professor Emeritus Andrew Murray Watson died on April 4, 2024. He was 93. A professor of Economic History, Watson was affiliated with the Department of Economics and Trinity College, where he was Emeritus Fellow, throughout his career with the University of Toronto.

While Watson retired in 1995, he taught until at least 2005 and completed his last academic assignment, a chapter for The New Cambridge History of Islam titled “Rural life and economy until 1800” at the age of 80.

After that, “he decided it was time to say goodbye to academia and joyously devote himself solely to travel, adventure, and the enjoyment of the good company of his friends spread round the world. Which he did and did well,” his family said in his obituary. “Amongst his many adventures in his 80s, he explored ancient grave sites in the Gobi Desert, and acted as guide for tours along the Silk Road. For over thirty years he spent the better part of his winters at an old palace in Bali where the staff treated him as an honoured uncle.” [Read more…]

Professor Yatchew’s Team to Review Electricity Distribution Benchmarking

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Portrait of Professor Adonis Yatchew
Professor Adonis Yatchew

Professor Adonis Yatchew and his research team are at the core of a new collaboration between the Ontario Energy Board and the University of Toronto’s Climate Positive Energy (CPE) Initiative. The budget for the project is $250,000 with the final report due to the OEB this summer.

The collaboration will see Professor Yatchew and his research team conduct a review of benchmarking methodologies — comparisons used to gauge the performance of Ontario electricity distributors — and how the performance is used to regulate pricing, and other factors related to the electricity system. The review will also identify new benchmarking methodologies that consider the emerging challenges to electricity distribution brought about by the broader energy transition.

“As climate change initiatives are increasingly introduced into energy systems, there tends to be upward pressure on costs,” Yatchew said. “Efficient regulation that enhances incentives for cost control has to be part of the larger picture of decarbonization efforts.” [Read more…]

Black Economists of Influence: Contemporary and Historical

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Economics touches every aspect of society. This is no less true in February, designated as Black History Month, or more recently, as Black Heritage Month. Whichever the preferred name of the observance, Black economists, both historical and contemporary, are major figures in the discipline.

Contemporary

Portrait of Marlene Koffi, Assistant Professor with the Department of Economics, University of Toronto.
Marlene Koffi

Names of thirty-two Black economists populated a non-exhaustive list of contemporary, influential Black African practitioners provided by Marlène Koffi, Assistant Professor with the Department of Economics. Accomplishments of the group include senior appointments to the Center for Global Development, the World Bank, and one served a term as a head of state. They also represent academic appointments at the world’s most prominent universities, including three at the University of Toronto.

Koffi herself joined the University of Toronto in 2020. Her research interests are broadly concerned with the Economics of Innovation and Science with a more specialized focus on equity issues that is evident in both her scholarly publications and her editorial contributions to media outlets like the Globe and Mail and the Hill Times. She also examines the application of deep learning, machine learning and Artificial Intelligence techniques to both research studies and to the creation of public policies. To that end, she is affiliated with National Bureau of Economic Research, the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society, and the Forward Society (FOS) Lab. [Read more…]

Basic Income Project for PEI in the Realm of the Possible: Q & A with Kourtney Koebel

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Portrait of postdoctoral researcher Kourtney Koebel
Kourtney Koebel

Kourtney Koebel knows how to reduce the experience of poverty on Prince Edward Island. Currently, almost 10% of the population of PEI lives in poverty, but Koebel and her colleagues believe it could be less than 2%. The solution? A Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) demonstration project. The model Koebel and her colleagues are proposing would ensure that no Islanders live in deep poverty, a condition defined as having an income less than 75% of the official poverty line.

Koebel, a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of Economics, Arts and Sciences, University of Toronto, is part of Coalition Canada, a cross-country network of experienced basic income advocates and experts. At the end of 2023, the group released A Proposal for a Guaranteed Basic Income Benefit in Prince Edward Island. The report presents a basic income model for a fully funded 5 to 7-year long demonstration program that, according to the report, would both reduce poverty for Islanders and be more cost-effective than previous GBI models that have been proposed or piloted. [Read more…]

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