Monthly Archives: April 2007
Who will be the new Governor of the Bank of Canada?
Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge will not seek second term: Governor David Dodge has informed the Bank of Canada’s Board of Directors and the Minister of Finance that he will not seek a second term as Governor. While Governor Dodge’s term continues until 31 January 2008, he indicated he is making his plans known […]
Foreigners are buying up Canadian assets. But that’s not the real story.
The spectre of economic nationalism has returned: foreigners are buying up Canadian-controlled firms. Oh my! Some reasons why we should still sleep soundly: – Foreign ownership is a good thing: ‘Foreign-controlled plants are more productive than domestic-controlled plants. Foreign-controlled plants and firms are also more innovative, more R&D intensive and use more advanced technologies.’ – […]
The best response to John Baird’s report on the cost of meeting the Kyoto targets…
…is right here. Go read it.
The Bank of Canada switches to manual
When the Bank of Canada increased its target for the overnight rate to 4.25% last May, it indicated that the target was going to stay there for some time. The time may be coming soon – CPI core inflation has been above 2% for several months now: It’s unlikely that the Bank will increase interest […]
Real wages and productivity revisited
Andrew Jackson says: I’ve argued for years, with much of the left, that average worker pay has lagged productivity growth mainly because of the increased bargaining power of capital vis a vis labour due to “globalization”, attacks on unions etc etc. There’s another explanation. It turns out that the way real wages are measured – […]
Reports of the retreat of globalisation in Canada are greatly exaggerated.
Jim Stanford’s column ($ link) (update: free version here) in today’s Globe and Mail makes a surprising claim: Everyone knows globalization is an irresistible worldwide process enveloping every economy, including Canada’s, in its market-driven tentacles. Right? Wrong. In fact, since 2000, Canada’s economy has been curiously de-globalizing before our eyes. The importance of global markets […]
A demographic explanation for the decline in labour’s share of income
The Economist reports on a study by the IMF (32-page pdf) that attempts to explain how and why labour’s share of income has been decreasing over the past couple of decades: There’s one factor that they don’t seem to have examined: demographics. One of the implications of an aging population is an increase in the […]
People respond to incentives. But not always in the way planners would have predicted
Increases in the time it takes to get to work have changed the behaviour of commuters. No, they’re not changing their driving habits; they’ve simply figured out better ways of using the time they spend in traffic: Rather than carpool, drivers adapt to gridlock: analyst. Drivers are getting more cozy in their fully equipped cars […]
Is The Economist trying to make me crazy? Because it’s doing a damn fine job of it
A chart from this story in The Economist: Spot the missing G-7 country. Its population is roughly the same as the top five countries put together; the vast majority of which are able to read English. Hint: it’s not Chad.
Income distributions and Mandelbrot sets
Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez and Mike Veall at McMaster University have a paper (AER version; NBER version) on how the top end of the income distribution in Canada has evolved over time. (Saez has of course been involved with many other projects using US data.) Happily for me, they’ve posted what is now my favourite excel […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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