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“Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It may seem hot to you,but it never does to anyone else.” Cited in Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (2012)

As we know, Dutch disease is about damage to industry from resource exports. As we witness the widespread drought this summer in North America and the damage to crops, Dutch disease needs to be redefined to also include the damage to agriculture. The Canadian West eats its own as it produces oil.

Occasionally we can still get a glimpse of the radical difference between modern and pre-modern concepts of time. A significant number of Marshall Islanders have migrated to the U.S. According to a recent story in the NY Times (july 4): “They puzzle over the American obsession with time…” The principal of an Arkansas school where 30% of the studenst are […]

On January 5th, 2012, the American Economics Association adopted new guidelines for the disclosure of potential conflicts of interests by economists. Please find my disclosure information below (thanks to Andrew Leach for turning the AEA guidelines into a template, which I have used as the basis for my own). Employment: I have been employed with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives as […]

What is this thing called “globalization?” To be absolutely precise, it’s the word that took over discourse about the global economy and pretty much everything else for what seemed like an eternity but, in fact, labelled a phenomenon that lasted only for a single decade, that of the 1990s, from the end of the Cold War to 9/11. It’s the […]

I expect some folks who oppose the Occupy movement will weigh in on merit – that the top 1% are deserving of their riches because they include people who pay a lot of wages and salaries for ordinary folk. That is, the story of hard-working, risk-taking entrepreneurs who should not be punished for being successful. I don’t really have any […]

For the wine lovers among us progressive economists, which definitely includes me, this NBER paper offers up a, well, sobering argument. “We examine the value of terroir, which refers to the special characteristics of a place that impart unique qualities to the wine produced. We do this by conducting a hedonic analysis of vineyard sales in the Willamette Valley of […]

Eric Pineault is the designated hitter on the topic of financialization but I thought I might make a small contribution to get the discussion rolling. I’ve been reading Galbraith’s The Predator State — see a review here — and it got me to thinking just how little our federal government — and governments elsewhere — has done to radically change […]

Ian Brown has a wonderful column in today’s Globe which rightfully suggests that maybe, just maybe, people should be a little upset about all the false promises of endless prosperity and perfect social harmony that were made in the leadup to the current economic and financial crisis.  Maybe, just maybe, the “system” must bear some responsibility for this collapse. But […]

It has come to my attention that some economists claim that our sovereign federal government is more or less powerless to kickstart the economy because of our great dependence on the United States and therefore should do next to nothing: “Mr. Orr and other economists urged Ottawa to ignore pleas to boost stimulus spending further – a move that would […]

Ah. For the good old days. When a Budget Implementation bill lived up to its, err, billing.  You know, stuff from the budget was in the bill.  Other stuff was dealt with in other bills where stuff could be properly debated. Nowadays, you never know what you’re going to get when you open your Bill C-10 goody bag.  Take the […]