Monthly Archives: October 2007
Why progressives should support reducing corporate tax rates
A recent working paper, entitled "The Incidence of Corporate Income Tax on Wages" (26-page pdf) by UBC’s Mick Devereux an entirely different Michael Devereux (thanks to Martin Boileau’s correction in the comments) and a couple of colleagues at Oxford’s Centre for Business Taxation, provides even more evidence to believe that the traditional aversion to corporate […]
The federal government’s proposed tax cuts are just as stupid as we’d feared
Sigh. The Conservatives set out an Economic Statement this afternoon, and it includes a measure to further reduce the Goods and Services Tax (GST) from 6% to 5%. From this, I infer that the Conservative government is willfully stupid: Reducing the GST is bad economics. Just ask anyone who has given any thought to the […]
Recent oil price movements in currencies other than the USD
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen (among other things) A rise in the USD price of oil, and A fall in the value of the USD compared to other currencies To what extent do these two phenomena cancel out? Here’s a graph of oil prices in terms of the USD, the yen, the euro […]
How increasing tuition fees can increase university participation rates
The Quebec government has just released a collection of studies on financing education, including this one (121-page pdf, in French) written by Valérie Vierstraete, a professor of economics at the Université de Sherbrooke. It addresses exactly the sort of questions that need to be asked and answered in this debate: what would happen to university […]
Reducing the GST again would be stupider, stupider, stupider, stupider
I keep hoping that the Conservatives’ throne speech proposal to reduce the GST by another percentage point will receive the recognition it deserves: derision and disavowal. The derision part seems to to be covered: Plan to cut GST blasted: The Conservative government’s plan to trim the GST for a second time has been soundly rejected […]
I wish there were more Canadian economics blogs
Dani Rodrik’s pessimistic post on the future of economics blogosphere – and his subsequent correction – left me a bit bemused. By my current reckoning – and I will be thrilled if someone can correct me – the Canadian economics blogosphere consists of two members: me and John Palmer at Eclecticon. A Canadian Econoview seems […]
The Bank of Canada shifts back to neutral
As predicted, the Bank of Canada decided to keep its overnight target at 4.5% on Tuesday. That’s twice now that the Bank has put off applying the tightening it started in July, and it looks as though this temporary pause has now been upgraded to a medium-term strategy. The October Monetary Policy Report (32-page pdf) […]
Jockeying for position at the Bank of Canada
In my post on Mark Carney’s appointment to the top job at the Bank of Canada, I said That’s twice in a row that a governor has been an external candidate – although he has worked there before. I suspect that Bank employees who are thinking about the top job will start sending their CVs […]
Canada’s indestructible trade surplus
Canada’s trade surplus widened in August, and – notwithstanding a 45% appreciation in the CAD-USD exchange rate – is still roughly the same as it was five years ago:
A week of mixed signals for the Bank of Canada
On the one hand, the Bank of Canada has had to intervene repeatedly in the overnight market to defend its target. (It has also added liquidity in the the two days since that post: $495m yesterday and again $420m today.) And the spread between the overnight rate and that of short-term paper is still well […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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