Affordable electricity Decarbonization in OECD countries? Part I

After eight extensive posts about the Ontario electricity sector, I am expanding my geographic coverage to look at the electricity sectors in selected OECD countries. My focus will be on the historical and relative performance of each country’s sector with respect to decarbonization and prices. As in the case of Ontario, whole volumes could and have been written about each […]

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Japanizing the World Economy

This guest post is from PEF members Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia, both of whom are full professors of economics at the University of Ottawa. The “Japanization” of the World Economy Over the last twenty years, the Japanese economy underwent a long period of economic stagnation that some economists have characterized as a protracted “balance-sheet recession”. The period has been […]

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Japan Shows Us The Way

A week ago, Paul Krugman wrote that Japan’s stable if sluggish economy and low unemployment could start looking pretty good compared to the Voodoo economics advocated by US Republicans. The counterintuitive case for Japan as an economic model just became more compelling with the Bank of Japan’s intervention to lower the yen. As reported on the front page of today’s […]

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Japan – Dancing on the Edge of Calamity

Duncan Cameron has asked me to post this contribution by Ken Courtis,  a recognized authority on Japan and world economics. A Canadian academic turned investment banker, he has been resident in Japan for many years. On 09-11-26, at 19:30, Ken Courtis wrote: The reality of Japan’s fiscal situation is as close to calamitous as any major economy has ever experienced, […]

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Reading the Crisis

I highly recommend “The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis” by Graham Turner. “Graham Turner is one of only a handful of economists to understand the roots of the current financial crisis, its implications for all of us and crucially what should be done now. I strongly recommend you read this book.” —Larry Elliott, Guardian “A […]

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