Here is an extract from my column on balanced budgets in the Globe ROB today. “When it comes to balancing the books, the Harper government is seemingly more Catholic than the Pope. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), hardly big fans of high government spending, argue in their latest Country Report released in January that the federal government should ease […]
Read moreFrom iPolitics, here is my constructively critical take on the first discussion paper of the new Commission chaired by Chris Ragan. In a nutshell, polluter pay is a good idea, and it is good to see such a mainstream crowd endorse the principle, but the principle of recycling the increased revenues to personal and corporate income tax cuts is not […]
Read moreHere is the link to a piece I wrote for the Globe on line this week re an interesting new eBook on secular stagnation.  I am struck by the fact that several eminently mainstream economists, mainly in the US but also Blanchard at the IMF, see a need for public investment to drive growth, given the fact that loose monetary […]
Read moreHere is a little bit of rainy day economic doodling that may be of interest. Piketty famously argues that there is a tendency for r – the rate of return on capital- to exceed g- the rate of growth of income. If r>g, wealth and income inequality will grow inexorably since ownership of capital and claims on income from capital […]
Read moreCapital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty (Belknap Press, 2014) is the economics publishing sensation of our times, especially in the United States. Currently the number one seller on the US Amazon web site and widely debated in the “blogosphereâ€, this long book is being favourably compared to the seminal works of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Marx […]
Read moreI have just finished Piketty’s magnum opus which is clearly one of the most important economic books of our time. I am still trying to digest the theoretical argument. Below I provide a link and intro to an important commentary by Tom Palley who argues that Pikkety is too close to the neo classical paradigm re rewards to capital. This […]
Read moreIt is interesting to note that the most recent IMF staff report on Canadian economic issues echoes some key concerns of progressive economists. I have reported these for the Broadbent Institute. As noted in this summary, the IMF report that corporate Canada’s cash hoard is the biggest in the G7 and has been mainly amassed by energy and mining companies. […]
Read moreTom Palley has an interesting piece on his blog re differing approaches to the theme of secular stagnation, drawing a distinction between Marxist and structural Keynesian perspectives. As he notes, neo liberals such as Summers have got on the bandwagon without really exploring in depth the roots of the problem.
Read moreThis is quite interesting. If you read the short section from the recent IMF Staff Report on Canada under point 16, it is quite clear that the IMF Staff think that, with growth significantly under potential, the federal Budget should be brought back to balance more slowly than is now the plan. It strikes me as unusual that they flag […]
Read moreThere was a spate of media stories recently on a US report finding that increased employment of seniors has no negative impacts at all on young people also seeking work. In fact, the study by leading US economist Alicia Munnell, looking mainly at the experience of US states, did say that the so-called “lump of labour†fallacy may be true […]
Read moreFurther to Erin’s post, the Labour Force Survey numbers released by Statistics Canada on December 6 give the lie to the Harper government’s frequently heard claim that our economy is doing well. Over the past year, between November, 2012 and November, 2013, ALL of the net new jobs created in Canada were in the lowest paid and most insecure occupational […]
Read moreI have written a couple of pieces for Economy Lab in the Globe and Mail recently on the issue of secular stagnation. (Links below) The term was coined by the pioneering American Keynesian Alvin Hansen who argued that the US economy of the late 1930s faced a long period of stagnation due to a chronic, structural gap between aggregate supply […]
Read more In her important new book “The Entrepreneurial State” which got a rave review from Martin Wolf in the Financial Times, University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato attacks the conventional view that the role of the state should be largely confined to promoting free markets, correcting market failures, and maintaining a low spending, pro free enterprise climate to facilitate private sector […]
Read moreHere is the link to a short piece I wrote for Economy Lab. It borrows from and includes the link to an important paper co-authored by the PEF’s own Marc Lavoie and recently published by the ILO , which I highly recommend. The overall conclusion of that paper is that a shift from profits to wages would be a positive […]
Read moreThe latest issue of the York University e journal Just Labour is now available. In addition to three articles on youth and labour, it includes my paper “Up Against the Wall: the Political Economy of the New Attack on the Canadian Labour Movement” and thoughtful responses from Sam Gindin, Ken Lewenza, Maya Bhullar and Patricia Chong. The major issue raised […]
Read moreHere is my take from today’s Economy Lab in the Globe. To expand a bit on alternatives, my take is that the neo liberal turn at the end of the 1970s was one possible response to the stagflation crisis, which found mainstream Keynesian economics wanting. Left Keynesians such as Kalecki had long recognized that full employment capitalism with strong unions […]
Read moreLast week’s publication of the so-called “sunshine†list of 88,412 Ontario public sector workers earning more than $100,000 per year elicited lots of howls of outrage in terms of on line commentary. It should not be forgotten that the whole point of the annual list – which dates back to the Harris days – is to yank on the […]
Read moreIn a very long and fascinating speech which has been amplified by Martin Wolf in the FT, Lord Adair Turner seeks to break the taboo on discussion of the potential ability of central banks to monetize fiscal deficits. His argument boils down to a political economic one … Some monetization might be useful in certain circumstances such as in Japan […]
Read moreA lot of debate in the US on Obama’s excellent proposal to hike the minimum wage. John Schmitt of CEPR has put out an excellent paper summarizing all of the research to show that the employment effects of reasonable increases are … Zero, zilch .. Due to various adjustment mechanisms including lower turnover, higher productivity and wage compression. He also […]
Read moreA background study for the latest IMF report on Canada (see pages 42 to 51) adds further weight to the argument that the rise in the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar, driven in large part by high commodity prices, has underpinned a sharp decline in the US market share of Canadian manufacturers since 2000 and a major shift in […]
Read moreFurther to Toby’s comments, Miles Corak has posted an excellent commentary on the new numbers on high incomes, together with a spread sheet showing average effective tax rates by income group from the 1980s. The big story is that the average effective tax rate for the very affluent has been stable since the early 1980s as their income share has […]
Read moreI have a commentary posted on the Broadbent Institute web site, arguing that inequality of wealth fundamentally undermines the argument that market rewards are “fair.” http://www.broadbentinstitute.ca/en/blog/andrew-jackson-distribution-wealth-implications-neo-liberal-justification-economic-inequality
Read moreHere is my Economy Lab piece on the study by Philip Cross released yesterday. On close examination, his “expanding sectors” turn out to be low value-added resource processing and his argument that Canadian manufacturing is not in decline does not hold water. The decline in output has been far greater than in the US and productivity growth much slower. Looks […]
Read moreThe Board of Directors of the Bank of Canada have retained Odgers Berndtson to seek a new Governor, and have placed an ad in the Globe and Mail, the Economist and La Presse. The wording of the advertisement is questionable. First, it states that “the Bank of Canada is the pre-eminent macro-economic institution in Canada.†Really? The Bank of Canada […]
Read moreHere are, in no particular order, my picks for the four best books of 2012 from a progressive economics perspective. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. (Verso). I suspect this book will become a classic. It is a rich and highly detailed account of how states, and above all the […]
Read moreLetter to the Editor Ottawa Citizen, December 18  Andrew Coyne (December 14) leaps on a study by TD Economics to claim that “income inequality in Canada has remained more or less flat since the mid 1990s†and that the big surge in the rising income share of the top 1% took place before 1998.  As Coyne himself says, “the reigning […]
Read moreHere is an important op ed from the Irish Times by a former senior IMF official, arguing that the most heavily indebted euro countries will have to default on some of their public debt. If they do not, public debt will continue to rise to even more unsustainable levels as unemployment and output losses soar.
Read moreLeader of the Opposition Tom Mulcair gave a fine speech on the Budget Bill on October 24 which can be found in its entirety in Hansard. I have posted some extracts of interest to progressive economists below. They echo many of the arguments made on this blog “What is more, the Conservatives are creating an economy where salaries will be […]
Read moreHere is a piece I wrote for today’s Globe Economy Lab re the Department of Finance report on the costs of an aging society. The key point is that the mainstream doom and gloom projections of the costs of falling labour force growth ignore the positive impacts which can be expected as and when we get to a situation of […]
Read moreFurther to my earlier post critiquing the recent Mintz study - which argued that cuts in corporate tax rates are not significantly denting corporate tax revenues – I looked up the effective corporate tax rate (income tax paid as a percentage of taxable corporate income.) Here is what shows up on CANSIM 180-0003. 2006 – 31.0% 2007 – 29.9% […]
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