(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 morePaul 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 moreLast 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 moreOn 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 moreMuch 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 moreThere 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 moreFrench 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 moreFor 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 moreJust 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 moreA 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 […]
Read moreThe prospect of freer trade with European nations is generally popular among Canadians. And why shouldn’t it be? Doesn’t the Canadian left repeatedly point to the advantages of many European social and economic institutions? Who could argue with lower prices for European cheese, wine, or chocolate? After all, we’ve been waiting for years for the Canadian economy to pivot to […]
Read moreIn a little noticed comment, Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently was reported to say: “Dropping our tax rate has not caused the government’s corporate income tax revenues to fall, which indicates that it does in fact attract business.” No one seems to have questioned his statement, even though it was made on the same day Canada dropped to 15th place […]
Read moreJoe Oliver recently announced a Small Business Tax Cut, sorry, Job Credit. Economists across the ideological spectrum denounced it as poorly designed. This opened up an interesting opportunity for a national debate about what we want E.I. to be – coverage right now is at all time lows, and the accumulated deficit from the last recession will soon be repaid in […]
Read moreRecently, Minister Kenney took to twitter to defend his decision to limit the number of precarious workers entering Alberta through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Again, the minister is to be applauded for his grasp of the situation. His changes do little to fix the actual problem though. The evidence that he cited was the lack of wage growth among […]
Read moreA guest blog post from Mario Seccareccia and Louis-Philippe Rochon. After learning that the Canada Revenue Agency is auditing  the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives  on the grounds that it allegedly engages in politically partisan, biased and one-sided research activity,  a number of university professors  have drawn up an open letter asking the Minister of National Revenue place a moratorium on its […]
Read moreThis morning the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation released a new report about “motivational interviewing” for welfare recipients. The link to the full report is here, and the link to the executive summary is here. Authored by Reuben Ford, Jenn Dixon, Shek-wai Hui, Isaac Kwakye and Danielle Patry, the study reports on a recent randomized controlled trial done on long-term […]
Read moreHere is the link to a piece I wrote for the Globe on line this week re an interesting new eBook on secular stagnation.  I am struck by the fact that several eminently mainstream economists, mainly in the US but also Blanchard at the IMF, see a need for public investment to drive growth, given the fact that loose monetary […]
Read moreToday Statistics Canada released their first set of job numbers since the ‘oops’ of July 2014. And the news was dismal. The labour market shed 112,000 private sector positions, the largest single month drop in the private sector since, well, forever. Coming on the heels of a mistake is unfortunate, but you have to think that Statistics Canada was extra […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reported today that employers cut the number of employees by 98,000 in August, which was largely masked by 87,000 more Canadians identifying themselves as self-employed. As a result, the headline level of “employment†– which includes self-employment – was little changed. Self-employment ranges from high-income professionals to people eking out a living doing odd jobs. However, when a […]
Read moreLabour market data in Canada is easily available by sex, age, and region. We spend a great deal of time talking about these factors. More recently Statistics Canada made labour market data available on CANSIM by landed immigrant status, going back to 2006. This factor is less often included in most labour market analysis, and too few know that it […]
Read moreMost of the jobs added to the Canadian labour market in 2014 were part-time – prompting headlines such as “Experts fret Canada becoming a nation of part-time workers“. Are we really a part-time nation? Well, 80% of workers in Canada are full-time, and a large majority of part-time workers choose to work part-time hours. So, no, we are not at […]
Read moreWhat a rough week it’s been over at Statistics Canada. It’s a world-renowned statistical agency — though its lustre has been tarnished in recent years by budget cuts, cancelled data programs and series, and the nonsense of the Harper government’s libertarian crusade against the long form census. The problems this week around its Labour Force Survey report for July will […]
Read moreThe Fraser Institute’s annual Consumer Tax Index report generated some media buzz with its outlandish claims about just how much taxes have risen since 1961. Before you get worked up about this, consider that 1961 was over half a century ago, before the time of universal health care that we all benefit from, before the Canada Pension Plan and the […]
Read more[Cross-posted on my blog here.] It’s relatively common knowledge that employer-run pensions have been scaled back over the past few decades. I’ve decided to dig up some data on pensions for this post to see just how this has taken place in Canada, motivated by a recently-released analysis of US pension reform that finds contradictions in how US workers have come […]
Read moreHere is a little bit of rainy day economic doodling that may be of interest. Piketty famously argues that there is a tendency for r – the rate of return on capital- to exceed g- the rate of growth of income. If r>g, wealth and income inequality will grow inexorably since ownership of capital and claims on income from capital […]
Read moreIn my many years documenting and critiquing the overblown claims of free trade proponents about the supposedly self-regulating efficiency-promoting mutually-benefiting effects of globalization, I’ve encountered some real doozies.Â
Read moreA guest blog post from Louis-Philippe Rochon: Dear friends and colleagues, The new issue of the Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) is now out, and you can find it here. It features an interesting symposium on ‘Steve Keen and his critics’, and contains not only a paper by Steve Keen, but replies by Marc Lavoie, Tom Palley, and Brett Fiebiger. […]
Read moreErin does a nice job of documenting the fact that the number of EI recipients is falling, despite the fact that unemployment is rising. But it seems to me that the crisis in EI is forever falling on deaf ears. Even though only 37.5% of unemployed workers are receiving EI, pundits and politicians feel that the problem with EI is not […]
Read moreStatistics Canada reported today that the number of people receiving Employment Insurance (EI) benefits fell by 12,070 in May – the largest drop in nearly two years. (The last time Statistics Canada records indicate a larger decrease was 12,670 in July 2012.) This substantial decline in EI benefits comes as unemployment is rising. The Labour Force Survey indicates that unemployment […]
Read moreWhen it comes to global warming, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that what matters is the total volume of greenhouse gas emissions going forward. This amounts to about 30 years of emissions at current levels – a global carbon budget that would provide the world a 66% chance of staying below 2°C. There is some debate about whether an upper limit of […]
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