The Progressive Economics Forum

As Erin alludes to in an earlier post, the PEF organized events at this year’s Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association (CEA) in Montreal (May 30 – June 2). All told, the PEF organized (or co-organized) eight panels/sessions, in addition to holding its annual general meeting, announcing the winners of our annual student essay [...]

The PEF marked our 15th anniversary at last weekend’s Canadian Economics Association conference in Montreal. Guillaume Hébert from the Institut de Recherche et d’Informations Socio-économiques (IRIS) delivered the following keynote address in French. Thanks very much to Mathieu Dufour for translating it into English. **** Thank you very much for inviting me to give this [...]

2013 may be your lucky year! The details of this year’s PEF student essay contest are now online. Please note the May 3 deadline and put up this poster to promote the contest.

For the 15th consecutive year, the Progressive Economics Forum (PEF) is sponsoring its own events at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association (CEA).  This year’s Annual Conference of the CEA is taking place at HEC Montréal. PEF events will take place in the May 31 – June 2 period.  All information pertaining to [...]

The Progressive Economics Forum will be occupying the Calgary School (also Jim’s and my alma mater) on June 8 and 9 at the annual Canadian Economics Association conference. Our schedule of sessions is now available.

The Progressive Economics Forum (PEF) is proud to announce that Mike McCracken, Chair and CEO of Informetrica Ltd. in Ottawa, has won the 3rd biennial Galbraith Prize for a lifetime contribution to economics and social justice in Canada. Congratulations, Mike! Mike co-founded Informetrica in 1972, after working at the Economic Council of Canada, where he [...]

The information for this year’s student essay contest is now available. Please note the submission deadline of May 7. UPDATE (March 15): Please put up this poster to promote the contest.

In June 2012, the PEF will be awarding the third John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics. Nominations are now open to all PEF members in good standing (if you are a lapsed member or want to join for the first time, click here), and the window for nominations will stay open until January 31, 2012. [...]

Today’s Globe and Mail (page B15) mentions the PEF in a story on the corporate sector’s record-breaking accumulation of cash, a subject about which we have often blogged. Corporate Canada has tripled its cash stash in each of the last two decades. The following Statistics Canada figures are “Canadian currency and deposits” plus “Foreign currency [...]

The ubiquitous Ish Theilheimer of the left-wing on-line news site Straight Goods has written a very generous profile of the Progressive Economics Forum. He hung out at last weekend’s CEA meetings at the University of Ottawa for a while, and caught a few PEF members (including myself, David Robinson, and Brendan Haley) on the way [...]

At this year’s Annual Conference of the Canadian Economics Association, Armine Yalnizyan gave a presentation entitled “Surviving the Recovery:  The Distribution of Canadian Household Debt.” The panel was co-sponsored by the Canadian Association for Business Economics and the Progressive Economics Forum. As Armine made clear in her presentation, household debt in Canada has steadily risen over the [...]

The parenthetical reference to Canada in my last post prompted several good comments. This post attempts to summarize and address them. Dr. Stockhammer has co-authored a paper with estimates for Canada, but he would be the first to note that they are mechanical and not necessarily relevant to policy. He finds that Canada’s domestic economy [...]

PEF members Louis-Philippe Rochon and Mario Seccareccia have organized a conference on “Contemporary Capitalism: Its Financial Circuits, Its Transformation and Future Prospects” on May 31 and June 1 in Ottawa, right before the PEF summer school and Canadian Economics Association conference. Click here for the program. For more information, please contact lprochon2003 [a] yahoo.com

A thousand economists, including a fair number of PEF members, have signed the following letter in support of a financial transactions tax. The Guardian has published a story about the letter and posted the list of economists. UPDATE (April 15): This PDF version of the economists’ list is slightly updated and much easier to navigate. [...]

Jack Layton unveiled the NDP’s policy platform today.  Among other things, it promises to eliminate the deficit (i.e. balance the federal budget) within four years.  I’m not sure it should. Several years back, I had the opportunity to take a directed reading course from John Smithin.  In addition to being a long-time member of the [...]

The Progressive Economics Forum has the following line-up of sessions for this year’s Canadian Economics Association conference on June 3-5 at the University of Ottawa. Thanks very much to Nick Falvo for coordinating our conference activities and putting this schedule together. We are also hosting a summer school the day before and announcing our essay [...]

The Progressive Economics Forum is organizing a summer school on economic theory and policy in our nation’s capital on June 2. For more information, please see the following poster or contact David Pringle: dpringle [at] ncf.ca  Please download the poster and put it up at your local university campus.  

We already have several posts about today’s front-page Globe and Mail story, but that won’t stop me from piling on. Andrew and Marc have noted that today’s story makes points familiar to this blog’s readers. Indeed, posts questioning the alleged relationship between corporate tax cuts and business investment are almost too numerous to list. Jim, [...]

I just want to draw attention to the rules and April 30th deadline for this year’s PEF Student Essay Contest. Please put up this poster at your local university campus.

I was at our neighbourhood leftie bookstore today and picked up a copy of the new book from John Loxley at the University of Manitoba: Aboriginal, Northern, and Community Economic Development: Papers and Retrospectives (Arbeiter Ring: 2010). It’s a collection of John’s work over the years in the area of first nations and northern economic [...]

Today, the Global Development and Environment Institute and the Institute for Policy Studies released the following statement signed by more than 250 economists, including a couple of Progressive Economics Forum members: Dear Secretary Clinton, Secretary Geithner, and Ambassador Kirk: We, the undersigned economists, write to alert you to important new developments in the economics literature [...]

Prof.  Myron Gordon was an economist, a long-time member of faculty at the Rotman School of business at the U of T, and a founding member of the Progressive Economics Forum.  Sadly he passed away in Toronto on July 5 of this year. My Gordon was very influential with me, and I know with many other independent-minded [...]

One million. No, it’s not the number of posts that Armine has written about the census. (I count only 32.) A million is the number of times this blog has been viewed since Marc started it back in the summer of 2006. It has been an eventful few years in Canadian economics: the commodity “super [...]

Thanks to Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, from the University of Ottawa, who oversaw and judged our essay contest for 2010. And also thanks to the entrants to this year’s competition, as Marc and Mario reported a record number of entries and a very high quality of writing. Here are the winners: Undergraduate Winner ($500 [...]

Hi all, Last time I was in Quebec City, I got tear gassed by my government during the 2001 Summit of the Americas. I’m sure next week’s trip for the CEA conference will be much better than that. In fact, we have an amazing line up of panels, including a new Galbraith lecture from this [...]

Please join us in Quebec City this May 28-30 for another round of PEF sessions at the Canadian Economics Association meetings. Here is the tentative PEF line-up for the meetings. Friday, 09:00 – 10:30 PEF I: Was Financialization Rational for Capital? Organizer: Robert Chernomas (U. of Manitoba) -Fletcher Baragar, “Why Financialization, Why Now?” -Robert Chernomas, [...]

I am pleased to announce John Loxley as the winner of the 2010 John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics. John will be joining us in Quebec City during the Canadian Economics Association meetings at the end of May to give the Second Galbraith Prize lecture. Please join us if you can make it! Below is [...]

Paul Davidson gave a great talk to the Progressive Economics Forum at the recent Canadian Economics Association meetings. Below is a teaser; the full talk is here. ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS OF THE OPERATION OF A CAPITALIST ECONOMY: EFFICIENT MARKET THEORY VS. KEYNES’S LIQUIDITY THEORY by Paul Davidson, Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics Politicians and talking [...]

The PEF will once again be hosting panels at this year’s Canadian Economics Association meetings, May 29-31 in Toronto. We are sponsoring a record nine panels, plus our AGM and a Keynote by Paul Davidson. On behalf of the PEF, I would like to thank the Canadian Economics Association for a small grant that facilitates [...]

Marc Lee predicted a deficit a year ago (in a paper that graciously acknowledged comments from Toby and me.) Our blog was also ahead of the curve on some other aspects of Budget 2009. I flagged the Equalization cuts the morning after the November 2008 Economic Statement, when they received little attention. These cuts have since become [...]