Is the Canadian Labour Market Really Operating at Capacity?

(This note was prepared for a meeting of trade union economists with Paul Jenkins, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, to be held on Monday, December 11, 2006.) Introduction The Bank of Canada believes that the Canadian economy is currently operating “just above” capacity, justifying this week’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged despite a noticeable slowdown in economic […]

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Bank of Canada Inflation Targeting

It was a ho-hum announcement, and I don’t know if it generated much media coverage in Canada or not.  But last week the Bank of Canada and the Dept. of Finance announced another 5-year extension (to 2011) of the current inflation targeting regime (keep total year-over-year inflation within a point above or below 2 percent, using the core inflation rate […]

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For whom the Nobel tolls

The 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Edmund Phelps. (Technically, this is the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, because Nobel did not actually endow a prize in economics back in 1901; the economics prize was added in 1968.) The essay accompanying the prize can be found here. Below I’ve pasted two differing econo-blog […]

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