Possessive Individualism

That’s what the political theorist C.B. Macpherson (1911-1987) saw emerging historically with the rise of capitalism. Frank Cunningham in his just published intellectual biography of Macpherson, The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson: Contemporary Applications describes possessive individualism as “The individual is proprietor of his own person, for which he owes nothing to society”. That sounds like an apt description of […]

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Abraham Rotstein and the Radical Decade from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies

Remarks at a posthumous book launch of his Myth, Mind and Religion at Massey College, University of Toronto, October 2018 For more than 50 years, going back to the days of the old Department of Political Economy, Abe was my colleague in teaching and researching economic history and political economy, my intellectual soulmate, and my closest friend. I have many […]

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The New Language of Resource Exploitation: From Staples Dependency to Extraction Empire

“Staples dependency” we know from Innis onwards.  It can mean reliant upon, dependent on, the export of staples, and permits of a staple theory of linkages as economic theory. It can also mean a resource margin of a more developed imperium. Economic theory is infused by the power relations inherent in “dependency” and is transformed into political economy. In the […]

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Rotstein’s Monumental Epitaph

The late Abraham/Abe Rotstein (1929-2015) was an economist of a leftist persuasion, literally a Left Liberal. He left behind an almost completed manuscript which he had been working on for more than three decades. It has now been published.  Its title Myth, Mind and Religion: The Apocalyptic Narrative is indicative of its extraordinary breadth. Problems, possibilities, catastrophes, which compel resolution […]

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Was Innis Wrong?

The question is taken from the title of an article by Nancy Olewiler of Simon Fraser University in the Canadian Journal of Economics (November 2017), which, as it happens, was delivered as the Innis Lecture at the meetings of the Canadian Economics Association in 2017: “Canada’s dependence on natural capital wealth: Was Innis wrong?”  Her answer: she writes “Literature and […]

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The Bank of Canada should target full employment: 61 economists

On May 28th, 61 Canadian economists (myself included) signed the following letter urging the federal government to instruct the Bank of Canada to consider full employment and not only inflation when conducting interest rate decisions.  It was through the great organization of Mario Seccareccia that this was made possible and has received reviews by several media commentators, notably Barrie McKenna and Neil […]

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Winner of the 2018 Galbraith Prize in Economics: Jim Stanford

The Progressive Economics Forum is pleased to announce Jim Stanford as the winner of the 2018 Galbraith Prize in Economics. The selection committee included Fletcher Baragar (Manitoba), Hassan Bougrine (Laurentian), Toby Sanger (Canadian Union of Public Employees), Christine Saulnier (CCPA-NS) and Kevin Young (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), and was chaired by David Pringle (PEF). Jim has accepted the Prize […]

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A Tale of Two Books

Just published is Volume I of an exhaustive – occasionally exhausting – biography of Paul Samuelson. It’s titled Founder of Modern Economics: Paul A Samuelson Vol I: Becoming Samuelson, 1915-1948 and authored by Roger E Backhouse. The two books of my blog title are Foundations of Economic Analysis, published in 1947, a revision of Samuelson’s Harvard doctoral dissertation, in which he unearthed the mathematical scaffolding […]

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Media release: Alberta needs a provincial sales tax

(March 20, 2018-Edmonton) Today, a coalition of researchers, economists, and members of civil society released an alternative budget to boost Alberta’s economic growth while reducing income inequality. “Alberta is on the road to recovery after a deep recession,” said economist Nick Falvo, “now is not the time to reverse the course.” The document, High Stakes, Clear Choices, sets a progressive […]

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Toward a Better World

That is the well chosen title of a marvelous new book by Gerry Helleiner,  sub-titled Memoirs of a Life in International and Development Economics. Helleiner, from his home base at the University of Toronto, tells us in this most readable book, in his own modest way, the stories, notably from Africa, of how he devoted his life as an economist to […]

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Ontario’s Electricity Sector IV: Pre-Election Update

My first, second and third posts on the Ontario electricity sector described how policy and administrative decisions by different Liberal Governments gave rise to excess electricity generation with an inflated cost structure, leading to higher electricity prices. In anticipation of June 2018 elections, the Liberal Government recently implemented a costly and first-in-Canada financial scheme to fund its “Fair Hydro Plan” […]

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Update on Jimbo’s Minimum Wage Wager

It’s been over a week now since I challenged the authors of 5 business-friendly economic reports to a friendly wager over the future trajectory of employment in provinces that are raising their minimum wage to $15 per hour.  The challenge was issued in my Globe and Mail column of October 3. I was responding to the several business groups and […]

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A Post-Keynesian Summer School – TORONTO – June 23-25, 2017

The Review of Keynesian Economics and the Progressive Economic Forum are sponsoring a “Post-Keynesian Summer School”, to be held on the campus of the University of Toronto, June 23-25, 2017, and featuring leading post-Keynesian scholars from Canada, the US, and Europe. The summer school is aims at both undergraduate and graduate students, and registration is only $25 US per person, […]

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POST-KEYNESIAN SUMMER SCHOOL – Toronto – June 23-25, 2017

The Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) and the Progressive Economic Forum (PEF) are hosting a: “Post-Keynesian Summer School”, on the campus of the University of Toronto, June 23-25, 2017. Over 2 and a half days, the summer school will introduce students to post-Keynesian economics, both theory and policy, and will feature some of the biggest names in post-Keynesian economics.  Registration […]

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A Critical Take on Staples

Almost a century ago W.A. Mackintosh and Harold Innis created the staple approach to Canadian studies which came to be the core of “Canadian political economy.” Post World War II the staple approach was revised and rejuvenated, and became the core of what was now called “the New Canadian Political Economy.” There have always been doubters about the efficacy of […]

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Brexit and Neoliberalism

In the end, what was meant to be a referendum about the economic benefits of remaining in the European Union, was about everything but. There will be countless analyses of the results and of the reasons that motivated the British people to vote to leave the European Union. But in the end, I fear that very few of these analyses […]

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Litinerance au Canada: Sa croissance, les reponses politiques, et le plaidoyer

Le 1er février, j’ai fait une conférence sur l’itinérance adressée aux étudiants du séminaire d’études supérieures de monsieur Steve Pomeroy à la School of Public Policy and Administration à l’Université Carleton. Le thème de ma présentation a été l’émergence de l’itinérance au Canada en tant que domaine politique publique pressant dans les années 1980. J’ai parlé la croissance de l’itinérance, […]

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W. A. Mackintosh: Great Canadian Economist of the 20th Century

There were two great Canadian economists of the last century: H.A. Innis and W.A. Mackintosh. Innis had been much written about but not Mackintosh. This is now corrected by a thoroughly researched biography by Hugh Grant of the University of Winnipeg with the straightforward title W.A. Mackintosh: The Life of a Canadian economist. Mackintosh was both a distinguished scholar and […]

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Election 2015: Congratulations, Erin Weir!

The massive change dealt by Canadian voters to the seating arrangement in the House of Commons last Monday has seen the 3rd party Liberals leap to a majority government, sending the incumbent Conservatives across the aisle to the Official Opposition bench and the once-hopeful NDP back to the 3rd party seats.  In addition to the disappointment of being reduced from […]

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Greece and the death of democracy, economics and civility

Greece and the death of economics, and democracy, and civility, and so much more Louis-Philippe Rochon Associate Professor of Economics, Laurentian University Co-editor, Review of Keynesian Economics Irrespective of whether it was total capitulation, there are already a multitude of analyses trying to decipher what (and how) exactly happened in Greece and whether it could have been avoided. Countless opinions […]

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Revisiting my Top Ten Predictions for 2015

Revisiting my top ten predictions Louis-Philippe Rochon Associate Professor, Laurentian University Co-Editor, Review of Keynesian Economics   In early January 2015, I published on CBC my ‘Top Ten Predictions’ for the year (see here). Here we are half-way through 2015 and I thought I would revisit these predictions to see how I fared. Well, not bad actually. My predictions were:

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Jobs Gains Skew Part-time, Over 55

The Canadian labour market added 29,000 jobs in March, beating expectations. Underneath the headline, though, the numbers aren’t as rosy. A jump of 57,000 part-time jobs masked the loss of 28,000 full-time jobs between February and March. Given the jumpy nature of monthly LFS data, I’ve decided to base most of my analysis on quarterly numbers. And since most of […]

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THE EURO, THE DRACHMA AND GREECE: limited options in an impossible situation

Jean-Francois Ponsot Associate Professor of Economics, Université de Grenoble (France) and Louis-Philippe Rochon Associate Professor of Economics, Laurentian University (Canada) Co-Editor, Review of Keynesian Economics ___________________ The final agreement between Greece and the Eurogroup is a disappointment for anyone who held high hopes that Greece would have taken away more than a mere extension to the existing deal. In the […]

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ROCHON On Greece once More

LOUIS-PHILIPPE ROCHON Associate Professor, Laurentian University Co-editor, Review of Keynesian Economics Follow him on Twitter @Lprochon ________________________ As I have said before (see here) and will say again: any solution to Greek’s tragedy, which involves keeping the Euro as a currency is a second-best solution, unless the appropriate institutional changes are adopted. Anything short of this will simply maintain the […]

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Rethinking social protections in the age of contractors

The job market is changing rapidly. While most workers of our parents’ generation could have reasonably expected to spend their entire working careers in permanent full-time jobs with one or two employers, today many rely on contract work or freelancing, and even regular full-time employees change jobs frequently. There are pros and cons to this shift, but one very significant problem […]

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The Ontario Auditor’s damning report on P3s

The Ontario Auditor General’s 2014 Report includes a chapter on Infrastructure Ontario’s P3 program that is particularly damning–and corresponds with many of the criticisms made on this blog and elsewhere by myself and others. While the headlines were that P3 projects cost the province an additional $8 billion than if they were procured traditionally, the report documents numerous other problems […]

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GETTING YOUR ARTICLES PUBLISHED

A guest blog post from Louis-Philippe Rochon: GETTING YOUR ARTICLES PUBLISHED: JOURNAL EDITORS OFFER SOME ADVICE This short note is aimed at graduate students and faculty members alike who are looking to get their papers published in academic journals, a crucial exercise for the job market, but also in getting tenure and promotion. Our advice is based on our collective experience […]

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