When I was doing research on the idea of a Canada-US customs union, I came across a study (a PhD dissertation, actually) that was cited by proponents, claiming huge gains from a customs union. I looked into the methodology and found some serious shortcomings. CGE, or Computable General Equilibrium, models are a quasi-empirical approach that puts numbers to experiments, such […]
Read morePierre Fortin, who I usually find to be an interesting economic commentator on public policy issues, makes the case for demographic apocolypse. i used to share that fear, but I’ve done some number crunching on this issue in the BC context (i.e. more seniors than the national average) and am not convinced that the problem is as large as Fortin […]
Read moreJoseph Stiglitz demonstrates the hypocracy of the Doha Round, and US and EU trade policies: America’s new trade hypocracy As the current “development round” of trade talks moves into its final stages, it is becoming increasingly clear that the goal of promoting development will not be served, and that the multilateral trade system will be undermined. Nowhere is this clearer […]
Read moreThe New York Times reports on a Seattle initiative to provide homes for homeless alcoholics. They do not require sobriety to get a spot, a development that rankles moralistic conservatives. The reason is economics: it costs less to house them than what is currently spent on health care, detox and criminal justice. New York and some other major US cities […]
Read more“Guys, stop it! You’re gonna embarass me at George’s birthday party.” PM Harper clings to a crappy deal over the objections of companies representing half the exports to the US. Closer ties to Bush under conservative continentalism have not seemed to win us any favours. Oh, and by the way, Prime Minister Accountability, would you please release the text of […]
Read moreThis makes me nervous: Mortgages getting risky: CIBC HEATHER SCOFFIELD Globe and Mail Update TORONTO — Household credit is stable, but that statement masks the growing popularity of untraditional and risky mortgages, a new study by CIBC World Markets says. Household credit is growing steadily at an 11-per-cent annual pace, pushed by a 10.9-per-cent rise in residential mortgages for year […]
Read moreThe Caledon Institute weighs in on income security for working age adults. The abstract is below but this does not give any of the details. The authors do a great job of describing why the current patchwork mix of EI and welfare does not work well. Towards a New Architecture for Canada’s Adult Benefits Ken Battle, Michael Mendelson and Sherri […]
Read moreFrom his Project Syndicate column: Most academic economics rely on concepts laid down at the beginning of the twentieth century by the British economist Alfred Marshall, who said that “nature does not make leaps.†Yet we economists find ourselves increasingly disturbed by the apparent inadequacy of the neo-Marshallian toolkit that we have built to explain our world. The central bias […]
Read moreColumnist Paul Willcocks weighs in on the bad softwood lumber deal: VICTORIA – The softwood deal that David Emerson and Stephen Harper are pushing is so bad it’s hard to imagine what they’re thinking. The U.S. lumber industry wins; Canada loses. Canadian companies hand over $1 billion in to the U.S., with about half of it going directly to their […]
Read moreWill this be the end of the Doha Round? I doubt it. Deadlines come and go but negotiations still manage to go on. The Uruguay Round that led to the creation of the WTO went for eight years. The Doha Round (originally framed as the Doha Development Agenda, but that has long been forgotten) seemed dead after the Cancun Ministerial […]
Read moreJust on the heels of posting a $9 billion surplus for the last fiscal year, largely on the strength of resource royalties, comes this fascinating article in The Globe, which echoes comments about low royalty rates that the Edmonton-based Parkland Institute has been making for years: Alberta eyes greater share of oil wealth Considers changes to royalty system Alberta is […]
Read moreJim Stanford looks at the OECD’s press for labour market “flexibility” in his Globe column: Traditional economics holds that a less regulated, more “flexible” labour market — freed from well-meaning but counterproductive government interference — will automatically find a better match between supply and demand, and hence reduce unemployment. This general view was roundly endorsed by the high priests of […]
Read moreI don’t generally like Gary Mason’s columns, but in this one he does a good job of showing how bad the softwood lumber deal is for BC: … The agreement would allow the U.S. to keep about $1-billion of the $5-billion in penalties collected on Canadian softwood since 2002, and limit shipments to the United States if lumber prices begin […]
Read moreQuebec wants big, new equalization dollars from Ottawa. Why equalization? Because it is not conditional – Charest could use new money for tax cuts or any way he wants. Did I mention a Quebec election is coming up next year? The Globe reports: Quebec maintains the key to solving the so-called fiscal imbalance between the federal government and the provinces […]
Read moreRafe Mair looks back at history, then contemplates high oil prices and resulting tensions in Confederation, in his Tyee column: First some history. With the arrival of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in 1965, the oil price fix has been in and we all know about the crisis in 1974 that brought about huge lineups at the […]
Read moreWith a Harper government, I had a sinking feeling that bank mergers were going to come up again. We grant chartered banks a huge privilege – the expansion of credit, or the creation of money, an essential utility-like function of a modern economy – that leads to enormous profits on the part of the banks. And yet we are repeatedly […]
Read moreThe Globe and Mail reports that the Conservatives are planning to cut CPP premiums that were raised under the Liberals in order ensure that the program would be sustainable over the long term. In the interim they will use surpluses to fill the gap. But what happens if those surpluses disappear? This looks like a move that will make CPP […]
Read moreCall me a curmudgeon, but I am not celebrating the Fraser Institute's Tax Freedom Day. This notion does not deserve any media attention, but the fact that it does suggests it is a clever and successful gimmick. That is about the nicest thing that can be said about TFD. It grossly exaggerates the amount of taxes people pay in a […]
Read moreOne of the main arguments that there is a fiscal imbalance between the federal government and provincial governments (a vertical fiscal imbalance) is ongoing federal surpluses in the face of more constrained provincial finances. The latest Financial Management System data from Statistics Canada would seem to reinforce that view: In 2005/2006, the consolidated surplus for all Canadian governments, including the […]
Read moreWriting in the Toronto Star (link lost), economists Arthur Donner and Doug Peters reflect on economics, employment and inequality: The Distorted Priorities of Mainstream Economics Arthur Donner and Douglas Peters, May 2006 There has been a monumental shift in mainstream economics over the past forty years. When we studied economics in the 1960s, economists and public officials who had an […]
Read moreThe Globe and Mail's John Ibbitson (subscriber access only) thinks the outlines of a solution to the alleged "fiscal imbalance" has been found through a mix of more equalization plus increased program-related transfers to the provinces: The O'Brien report [aka the Expert Panel on Equalization and Territorial Formula Financing, appointed by former Finance Minister Ralph Goodale] reminds us of what […]
Read moreIf you listen to the Fraser Institute or like-minded think-tanks on the right, high taxes kill incentives to work and invest. They argue that Canada needs to lower its taxes in order to produce higher rates of economic growth. By their logic, the Scandinavian countries, all of whom have levels of taxes relative to GDP substantially higher than Canada’s, ought […]
Read moreA new book on Adam Smith by James Buchan deepens the case that he did not wear an Adam Smith necktie. Commented on by Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn: Most people these days regard Smith as the founder of free- market economics. He’s the hero of the get-the-government-off- our-backs crowd. He’s the pin-up boy of the flat-taxers and the business-knows-best crew. […]
Read moreMatthew McCartney, also writing in the Post-Autistic Economics Review, probes why economists know so little about economic growth when it comes to empirical research, and comes away skeptical about the merits of cross-country growth regressions: This paper is concerned with how economic growth is analysed by economists. Over the last fifteen years an extremely common method has been through cross-country […]
Read moreKevin P.Gallagher and Lyuba Zarsk, writing in Post-Autistic Economics Review, are skeptical of foreign investment policies. Their focus is on developing countries, but similar considerations could be made in the case of Canada given the intensity of investment in the resource sector and the federal government’s contention that Canada must maintain its share of global FDI because of its purported, […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reports on industrial capacity, an important data point for the Bank of Canada, ever watchful for inflation: Industrial capacity utilization rates First quarter of 2006 Capacity use among Canadian industries edged down in the first three months of 2006 in the wake of the rising loonie and a decline in foreign demand for some manufactured goods. Industries operated […]
Read moreUCLA's Edward Leamer sees a slowdown for the US in 2006, as the real estate party comes to an end. He sets the context well: The discovery of the Internet set off a mad dash for the Web, and that powered the U.S. economy forward at breakneck speed from 1997 to 2000. Every business in America had to have a […]
Read moreOK, so this is not about the Canadian economy. But I woke up this morning with that phrase about Adam Smith ties in my head and had to track it down – the Adam Smith tie being the burkha of free market fundamentalists, and as a result, a fitting gift to guest speakers at Fraser Institute functions. The quote comes […]
Read moreStatscan reports the latest numbers on foreign ownership: Foreign-controlled corporations accounted for 21.9% of assets held in Canada, and 30.0% of operating revenues. Despite the odd fluctuation, these shares have remained fairly stable ever since the post-recessionary period of the mid-1990s. Assets of foreign-controlled corporations rose a healthy 8.3% to $1.1 trillion in 2004, while those of Canadian-controlled corporations jumped […]
Read moreDalhousie's Lars Osberg reflects on his family in relation to the equalization program. This piece was published in the Halifax Mail-Star and Chronicle Herald Op-Ed, April 6, 2005 and merits a reprint here in the context of much bickering among the premiers: When my parents were growing up in Alberta in the 1930s, it was a poor province – their […]
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