By Patrick Luciani (AIMS Senior Fellow) Over the past two or three decades, behavioural economics has become the rage with swarms of newly minted PhDs running experiments showing how inconsistent and irrational we all are when it comes to retirement planning, consumer behaviour, taking care of our health or saving energy. This is a replay [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (AIMS Senior Fellow) Financial Post, 12 September 2017 McMaster University’s Population Health Research Institute just released a major study comparing the benefits of various diets around the world. After surveying 135,000 people over seven years in 18 countries, the study concluded that we should be eating more fats, more fruits and vegetables [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (AIMS Senior Fellow) Financial Post, 29 August 2017 There’s no doubt some public employees are trying to bring Trump down. But this shouldn’t surprise anyone. We live under the perception — or shall we say illusion — that civil servants are altruistic and loyally serve whichever party is in power, while actors [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (AIMS Senior Fellow) Shopping at the LCBO, Ontario’s government-owned alcohol-retailing monopoly, is like buying liquor from a bank. The only difference is that bank tellers are nicer. It's never fun buying wine and beer from bureaucrats. It’s better than it was in the ’70s, but lousy just the same. Ontario's wine producers [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (AIMS Senior Fellow) Financial Post, 19 June 2017 Ontario is forcing restaurants to post calorie counts when studies show that doesn’t work in getting people to eat healthy or lose weight Last month, after Ontario mandated calorie counting on restaurant menus, Freshii Inc., the Toronto-based salads-soups-and-wraps healthy-eating chain, balked. The chain’s motto is [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (AIMS Senior Fellow) Financial Post, 25 May 2017 As Pope Francis and Donald Trump finished up their rather brief, and apparently uncomfortable meeting on Wednesday, the Holy Father slipped the president a copy of his 2015 encyclical, “Laudato Si.” That happens to be Francis' critique of capitalism and the environment and, since [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (AIMS Senior Fellow) • Financial Post, 8 December 2016 Rarely does a chance come along to shift a nation’s fortunes by changing its constitution. Italy had that chance and, in the process, could rid itself of an elite and bloated public administration and effectively abolish one branch of government — the Senate [...]
By PATRICK LUCIANI (Research Fellow) • Financial Post, 01 Nov 2016 It looks as if the Belgians are waking to the reality of the mess they’ve made in opposing the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement, or CETA. But don’t think the problems created by little Wallonia are going away. The Walloons are pointing to how things [...]
In his Financial Post column, AIMS Research Fellow Patrick Luciani debunks the notion that experience in business portends well for executive political power. For instance, Donald Trump's business success in gambling and real estate industries came at the "fringes" of free markets, giving him a skewed understanding of economic policy. Read this article on the [...]
In his Financial Post column, AIMS Fellow Patrick Luciani examines the scientific literature on sugar, suggesting that it may not be the singular culprit for obesity that some fad diet believe it to be. In fact, the greatest single fault for gain in weight appears to be declining smoking rates. Read the full piece on [...]