Rochon Asks: “Is the Canadian economy unraveling?”
In a recent CBC blog post, Louis-Philippe Rochon assesses the current state of the Canadian economy. The link to the blog post is here. Follow him on Twitter @Lprochon.
Read moreSeccareccia on Greece, Austerity and the Eurozone
Over at the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Ottawa U professor Mario Seccareccia has given an interview titled “Greece Shows the Limits of Austerity in the Eurozone. What Now?” The interview can be read here.
Read moreResponsibility for Housing
On Monday I gave a guest presentation to Craig Jones‘ graduate seminar class in Carleton University’s School of Social Work. My presentation sought to answer two questions: 1. Why should government play a role in creating affordable housing? 2. Which level of government is responsible? With those questions as a backdrop, here are 10 things one needs to know: 1. […]
Read moreDon’t Play Tories’ Game on “Risk” of Deficit
Acres of newsprint have been devoted in recent weeks to the possibility that lower oil prices might push the federal budget back into a deficit position. As I argue in my column in today’s Globe and Mail, this drama is mostly political theatre — and progressives should be cautious about accidentally accepting the Conservative frame for this debate.
Read morePEF 2015 Student Essay Competition
The 2015 competition is now open for submissions. Deadline 04 May 2015. Please help us get the word out! Download a poster here. 2015 PEF ESSAY CONTEST RULES ELIGIBILE ENTRANTS ➢ Open to all Canadian students, studying in Canada and abroad, as well as international students presently studying in Canada. All entrants receive a complimentary 1-year membership in the Progressive […]
Read moreRochon on the Bank of Canada’s Decision to Lower the Rate of Interest
Louis-Philippe Rochon—who now blogs for CBC—argues that almost nobody had been expecting the Bank of Canada’s recent decision to lower the rate of interest. His post can be found here. Follow him on Twitter @Lprochon.
Read moreTrudeau, Carbon Pricing, Regional Politics, and Technology Policy
Yesterday, Justin Trudeau appeared to be backing away from a national carbon price. He says some of the provinces have already implemented carbon pricing, so the federal government will be left to “overseeâ€. What Trudeau is actually saying isn’t quite clear, but it certainly seems like he is giving up on creating a national carbon price and leaving it to […]
Read moreRethinking Economics Waterloo Conference, Feb 7
Ali Kraushaar and  Geoff Evamy Hill, co-founders of the Rethinking Economics Waterloo initiative, are organizing a conference to be held Feb 7. It looks good!  See below. — We want to inform you about the Rethinking Economics Waterloo Conference happening at St. Paul’s University College on Saturday, February 7. We invite you and all your members to be there, and hope we can […]
Read moreBanks and Balanced Budgets
The Bank of Canada surprised most analysts this week when it decided to cut rates by 25 basis points. The move comes after the price of oil has tumbled below $50 / barrel, oil producers announced huge cuts to business investment for 2015, Target announced a mass layoff of 17,600 workers in Canada, and the International Monetary Fund warned of […]
Read moreThe CBC – the Corporate Broadcasting Corp.
A new scandal blew up at the CBC this week when the website Canadaland published an exposé charging that Amanda Lang, the broadcaster’s senior business reporter and host of The Exchange, tried to sabotage an investigative story the CBC produced about abuses committed by the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) over the temporary foreign worker program (TFWP). The story aired […]
Read moreThe case against a revenue-neutral carbon tax
I’m a fan of carbon taxes, but increasingly I see the term “revenue-neutral” attached to it. Where I live, in BC, we have perhaps the most prominent example of a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and carbon tax advocates have come to promoting the BC model to other jurisdictions, such as Ontario, who are contemplating their own carbon tax. This includes the new EcoFiscal […]
Read moreLow Oil Prices, Good or Bad for Canada?
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere, you’re probably well aware that the price of oil has fallen dramatically, to less than $50 / barrel. What this means for Canada’s economic output & labour markets is not yet clear. But Stephen Poloz at the Bank of Canada has said that he expects the effect to be “not trivial”, and suggested […]
Read moreLouis-Philippe Rochon’s Top 10 Economic Predictions for 2015
Louis-Philippe Rochon has written a provocative blog post for the CBC titled “Top 10 Economic Predictions for 2015.” The post is available here.
Read moreFive Good Economic Developments in 2014
Every year has its ups and downs, of course. But there’s something about New Year’s that makes one naturally want to emphasize the positive. So here is my personal list of 5 positive economic developments from the year past — both globally and right here at home – that warmed this particular economist’s left-wing heart in 2014:
Read more‘Tis the Season to Rethink Our Charitable Giving
This op-ed by yours truly was published in The Province. The examples are BC-specific, but the message is much broader: donating to charity is not enough, we also have to change the status quo that forces so many people to turn to charity in a rich country like Canada. — It’s December, the season for charitable giving. Wherever you turn […]
Read more(Macro) Econ 101
On December 2, Chris Ragan wrote a column for the Globe and Mail titled “Another (Macro) Defense of Econ 101.â€Â The link to his column is available here .  My brief reply was published in the Globe and Mail on December 13.  The full version is below: Professor Ragan defends conventional (macro) Econ 101 as a pedagogical tool for training students’ minds to […]
Read moreThe Ontario Auditor’s damning report on P3s
The Ontario Auditor General’s 2014 Report includes a chapter on Infrastructure Ontario’s P3 program that is particularly damning–and corresponds with many of the criticisms made on this blog and elsewhere by myself and others. While the headlines were that P3 projects cost the province an additional $8 billion than if they were procured traditionally, the report documents numerous other problems […]
Read moreThe Ecofiscal Commission and Polluter Pay
From iPolitics, here is my constructively critical take on the first discussion paper of the new Commission chaired by Chris Ragan. In a nutshell, polluter pay is a good idea, and it is good to see such a mainstream crowd endorse the principle, but the principle of recycling the increased revenues to personal and corporate income tax cuts is not […]
Read moreCGE models and carbon tax incidence
A colleague of mine pointed out a relatively new paper about the distributional impacts of BC’s carbon tax. In my work, we look at actual energy expenditures by different household groups, and because lower income groups spend a greater share of their income on (carbon-intensive) energy, any carbon tax is regressive. But that regressivity ultimately depends on what you do […]
Read moreIPCC doom, gloom and an LED light at the end of the tunnel
The latest from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a super-synthesis of the state of agreed knowledge about climate change, adaptation and mitigation. Imagine thousands of research papers summarized in three major volumes (released over the past year), with this new report the grand summary of that. And even that condensed into a 40-page summary for policymakers. Now I […]
Read moreWhy the economy sucks (in one chart)
(The following is something I’ve prepared for the next issue of CUPE’s Economy at Work, a popular economics quarterly publication I produce.) In his annual Economic and Fiscal Update (EFU), finance minister Joe Oliver told Canadians that while the federal government will finally record a surplus next year after seven years of deficits, we can’t expect the economy to grow […]
Read moreGood Results from Latin American Elections (Guest Post by Paul Pugh)
Paul Pugh is a long-time progressive activist, trade unionist, and city councillor from Thuunder Bay, Ont., who has guest-written previous posts for us on economic policies in Uruguay. Here is a short report from Paul on the outcome of recent crucial elections in Latin America. Thank you Paul, and congratulations on your own re-election this week to Thunder Bay city […]
Read moreMinimum Wages and Employment Outcomes
Last week my Unifor colleague Jordan Brennan and I published a study through the CCPA Ontario office examining the historical empirical evidence regarding the link between changes in minimum wages and employment outcomes. We find there is no robust evidence in Canadian historical data that increases in real minimum wages cause either lower employment or higher unemployment, even when we focus […]
Read moreEconomics 101
On October 21, Chris Ragan wrote a column for the Globe and Mail titled “In defence of Economics 101.” The link to his column is available here. On October 24, Marc Lavoie, Louis-Philippe Rochon and Mario Seccareccia replied to him. The link to their response is available here.
Read moreBank of Canada, Exports, and LMI
Much has been made about Stephen Poloz’s decision to abandon ‘forward guidance’ in Bank of Canada rate setting announcements for the time being. Critics bemoan the loss of direction from the Bank. But Poloz’s comments yesterday were chock full of guidance on how the Bank sees Canada’s economic situation. Having been disappointed by the failure of Canada’s export sector to […]
Read moreThe Troubled Economics, and the Curious Politics, of the Canada-Korea Trade Deal
There are many motivations to explain the Harper government’s rush to sign free trade deals. Since coming to power, the Conservatives have implemented 6 FTAs, have “concluded” 2 more (with Korea and, purportedly, with the EU), and have fully 14 other FTA negotiations on the go.
Read moreThe Novel Observations of Jean Tirole?
French economist Jean Tirole has won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on industrial organization and regulation, in particular his insights into oligopolies.  “Who is Jean Tirole?,  many non-economists and some economists are asking today. The MIT-educated, Toulouse-based professor is a key figure in the New Industrial Organization (IO) movement. The movement, with its roots in the […]
Read moreJob Numbers Surprise
For the first time in a while, Statistics Canada gives us some good news on the job front. 74,000 net new jobs added in September, certainly nothing to sneeze at. Still, we would need to keep this pace up every month for the next year to close the employment gap left by the last recession. On the graph below, this […]
Read moreLabour market musings
Just a short post ahead of the job numbers that come out from Statistics Canada tomorrow. Five years after the end of the last recession, and Canada’s labour market is still limping along. And it seems to have taken a turn for the worse recently. While the Conservative government crows about one million net new jobs, they conveniently forget to […]
Read moreGETTING YOUR ARTICLES PUBLISHED
A guest blog post from Louis-Philippe Rochon: GETTING YOUR ARTICLES PUBLISHED:Â JOURNAL EDITORS OFFER SOME ADVICE This short note is aimed at graduate students and faculty members alike who are looking to get their papers published in academic journals, a crucial exercise for the job market, but also in getting tenure and promotion. Our advice is based on our collective experience […]
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