Monthly Archives: September 2006
Who gets paid minimum wage in Canada
2005 data (pdf): Percentage of employees who were paid minimum wage: 4.3 Percentage of minimum-wage workers who were – working part-time: 59.2 – between 15 and 19 years old: 44.5 – students living at home: 33.2 – heads of a household with children under 18: 5.4 The Toronto Star, in its […]
‘All models are wrong, but some models are useful’
What with the comments on Mark Thoma’s posts of Paul Krugman’s earlier attempts to explain economic methodology to non-economists and the apparent publication bias in favour of significant results in political science and in economics, George Box’ dictum is worth repeating for those who are too sceptical of models, and for those who aren’t sceptical […]
Useless factoid of the day: Canada is 16th on the WEF competitiveness report
I’ve spent half an hour on the WEF site, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what they’re measuring. Or why it matters.
Productivity growth by creative destruction
From a Statistics Canada study on competition, firm turnover and productivity growth: The competitive process that shifts market share towards more productive firms accounted for about two thirds of aggregate labour productivity growth in Canadian manufacturing from 1989 to 1999, according to a new study that examines firm turnover and productivity growth. [emphasis mine] Here […]
Mercantilism at the Globe and Mail
Courtesy of Jim Stanford: Why the rush to ink more deals? Where free trade is concerned, Canada is getting worse with practice: Now Ottawa is racing to seal a deal with South Korea. If trade with Korea then follows the same pattern as under our first five free-trade agreements, our imports will grow by 250 […]
On the significance of statistically significant results
Andrew Gelman notes that there are suprisingly many papers with results that are just barely statistically significant (t=1.96 to 2.06) and surprisingly few that are just barely not significant (t=1.85 to 1.95). in a selection of empirical studies in political science; Mark Thoma wonders if this extends to economics as well. I’m pretty sure it […]
Labour terms of trade and real wages
Several commenters on the previous post on the apparent disconnect between productivity and wages in the US pointed out that the choice of the deflator used to calculate real compensation might be a partial explanation. The standard theory of the firm expresses the real wage in terms of the price of output – not the […]
Why are wages tracking productivity in Canada, but not the US?
A well-known curiousity of this business cycle is that US wages are stagnant, notwithstanding quite impressive improvements in worker productivity: But in Canada, real wages are tracking productivity fairly closely: The Canadian counter-example provides a useful check for possible explanations for the US ‘disconnect’. For example, consider the hypothesis that US real wages are being […]
Because a good central banker will always be worrying about something
Inflation is in the middle of the target zone, output is at capacity, and the overnight rate is where the Bank of Canada thinks it should be to keep things that way. But that doesn’t mean that it’s become complacent: Central bank issues stimulus warning: Bank of Canada cautions provinces, Ottawa on plans for budget […]
Canadian Sisyphus
Yet another quarter in which Canada had a current account surplus, only to see its net international investment position (NIIP) deteriorate after revaluation. Even though Canada has an accumulated current account surplus of $156b since 2000, CAD appreciation (40% against the USD since 2002) has meant that the NIIP has improved by only $68b during […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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