Monthly Archives: September 2006
Canada gets an ‘attaboy’ from the IMF
The World Economic Outlook – all 297 pages of it – is out. Here is the paragraph on Canada: The Canadian economy continues to perform robustly, benefiting from its strong macroeconomic policy framework and the boom in global commodity prices. The main risks to the outlook are external, including the possibility of a sharper-than-expected slowing […]
Why we should stop worrying about the decline in labour’s share of income
…and why we should start worrying that it may not be falling fast enough. Here is a plot of the labour’s share of national income in the US: This ratio is countercyclical (profits are more volatile than wages), and although its range of variation is large enough to dominate the secular trend, the trend is […]
Voters’ economic acumen underestimated
The Conservatives’ promise to reduce the GST to 6% put economists once again in the painful position of witnessing economic sensibility being sacrificed for electoral gain. ‘Why’, we asked ourselves, ‘is bad economics good politics?’ Maybe it isn’t. From this morning’s Globe and Mail: Voters cool to GST cut, Tories warned: The GST cut at […]
Live blogging from the NDP Convention
So here I am in the corridor at the NDP convention. For some reason, the network to which I’m connected doesn’t reach into the main room itself, so this will have to do. I’ll be updating this post as the day goes on.
Observing the NDP
The New Democratic Party of Canada is holding their biennial convention here in Quebec City this weekend. In the last election, the NDP made some impressive strides in its quest to gain credibility in economic matters, so I’ve decided to attend as an observer in order to see if they stay on track. My first […]
The yield curve shifted, then tilted
There seems to be little doubt that beliefs about a US slowdown were sharply revised over the summer. Here are the US and Canadian yield curves for March, June and September: And here are the interest rate differentials: Perhaps the CAD hasn’t yet finished appreciating against the USD.
‘The first in our family to go to university’
It means a lot to be able to say that, so I was very pleased to see this editorial in the Globe this morning: The first in the door: It’s not a massive expenditure, but the symbolism is important. Ontario has announced that it will spend $5-million on its program to promote higher education among […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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