Monthly Archives: June 2007
Doing it by the (text)book: The Nordic approach to financing the welfare state
These are the slides I prepared for the session on ‘Taxation and Social Democracy‘, organised by the Progressive Economics Forum at the Canadian Economics Association meetings; the invitation was based on my blog posts on the nordic model. One of the things that distinguishes blogging from research is that although academia frowns on recycling ideas, […]
Corporate profits are not driving the increase in the top-fractile income shares. So how would higher corporate taxes reduce inequality?
Jason Furman, guest-blogging at Free Exchange, advocates higher corporate taxes. He gets at least two important things wrong: He seems to think that corporate taxes will be entirely paid by owners of capital. It’s more likely that investors will bear approximately none of the tax. He suggests that corporate taxes will help slow the growth […]
Why focus on progressive taxes and not on progressive transfers?
Many posts in the economics blogosphere on the subject of progressive taxation today: Greg Mankiw discusses this paper, Mark Thoma points us to a WSJ article, and Brad DeLong links to Mark’s post twice (here and here). Inequality – both its level and the rate at which it has been increasing in Canada and the […]
Yes, the Bank of Canada will increase interest rates in July
Bank Governor David Dodge gave a speech today, and repeated the warnings of higher interest rates ahead: [S]ince April, we have seen two things: an increased risk of future inflation and a rise in the Canadian dollar that appears to have been stronger than historical experience would have suggested. At our last fixed announcement date, […]
Looking back on the expansion: This time, it’s different
The 2007Q1 national accounts numbers were released last week, and it looks like we have indeed dodged that slowdown we were worrying about last fall. And a good thing, too: compared to the 1982-90 and 1991-01 expansions, this current run has some very nice features. This is one of those long, data-oriented posts with lots […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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