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From today’s Observer – http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2247583,00.html 

  Canadian Policy Research Networks have put out what looks like an interesting study. Their blurb follows. The study is at http://www.cprn.org/doc.cfm?doc=1757&l=en  Alberta is Canada’s hottest economy. Many Canadians are moving to Alberta drawn by its insatiable demand for skilled workers and professionals. Workers in Low-Income Households in Alberta, prepared for the Alberta Ministry of Employment, Immigration and Industry by […]

On closer examination, there does seem to be statistical support for the view that the higher exchange rate is having more of an impact on retailer profits than on consumer prices. Data from the Financial Statistics for Enterprises survey show that operating profits in the trade sector (wholesale and retail trade combined) have jumped from just over $8 Billion in […]

http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/ebrief_46.pdf

The Canadian Economics Association annual conference is just ten days away. Writers are furiously writing up their papers for presentation (or like me, are procrastinating until the pressure builds); discussants are plotting clever things to say in response to those papers; and others are just figuring out where they will be sleeping in Halifax. As in the past, the Progressive […]

“Within the bank’s powerful executive board, support for Mr Wolfowitz has narrowed to just three countries – the US, Japan and Canada, although both the Japanese and Canadian governments have recently come under domestic pressure to withdraw their backing.”  From today’s Guardian story on the imminent demise of the nepotistic neo con. http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2074592,00.html 

Hockey players are not the most sophisticated breed of human animal out there, but among the lot Shane Doan is one of the classier ones. So it is a bit much to hear Doan being called out on the legislative mat – in the House of Commons of all places – for being Team Canada’s captain, all over some passing […]

One of the more arcane rituals of global economic governance is the annual meeting between G-8 labour leaders and the host of the annual G-8 summit (only Dubya refused to conform to the convention.) The statement to be presented to German Chancellor Merkel in a couple of weeks by CLC President Ken Georgetti and colleagues is, as as per past […]

http://www.ndp.ca/xfer/pdf/2007-03-09-flahertyprebudget_e.pdf A good letter outlining what the federal NDP would like to see in the upcoming federal Budget.

http://www.liberal.ca/news_e.aspx?type=speech&id=12324 No big surprises in today’s big speech to a business audience – the usual mainstream Finance/OECD stuff on enhancing competitiveness by building a knowledge based economy. Surprisingly little in the way of an attempt to link industrial and environmental policy, for all of that green rhetoric during the leadership campaign. Ditto re any linkage between social justice and economic […]

http://papers.nber.org/papers/W12910 An instructive – and admittedly interesting – example of the proclivity of economists to reduce almost everything to rationalist explanations. Attack Assignments in Terror Organizations and The Productivity of Suicide Bombers   Efraim Benmelech, Claude Berrebi NBER Working Paper No. 12910 Issued in February 2007 NBER Program(s):   LS    POL This paper studies the relation between human capital of suicide bombers […]