Monthly Archives: June 2009
The CPI release: Ignore the headline, and look at the core
A recurring source of frustration for me is that when Statistics Canada publishes its monthly numbers on CPI inflation, the data that really matter don't appear in the press release* so I have to wait until its Cansim data base is updated before I can comment. One consequence of this omission is that first reactions […]
Reader Survey
We are just curious to know who is reading this blog, and would love to know a little bit more about you, including those who don't usually comment. 1. What is your nationality or country of residence? (What proportion of our readers are Canadian?). 2. What is your profession/occupation? Private/government/education sector? 3. How much economics […]
On extending EI to the self-employed
One of the outcomes of the latest political psychodrama is that a 'blue ribbon panel' will be set up to look at the idea of extending EI benefits to those who are self-employed. There are at least two reasons for taking this idea seriously: The number of people who are self-employed has been increasing as […]
The changing shape of the yield curve
There's a story out to the effect that the Federal Reserve may follow the Bank of Canada's lead and announce that it will not increase interest rates for several months or so (subject to some escape hatch if inflation starts to be a problem): US fed may speak with Canadian accent: While policy makers have […]
GDI and the terms of trade revisited
In an earlier post, I explained at great length how the collapse of commodity prices led to a sharp deterioration of Canada's terms of trade, and I concluded that this was the real story of why Canada was in recession: Over the past weeks and months, there have been any number of articles about how […]
Too much household debt? Again.
As far as I can tell, the Bank of Canada's Financial System Review (pdf) has basically got it right. At least in the way it is looking at household debt. Provided you ignore the aggregate numbers that make the headlines, and focus on the disaggregated numbers instead.
In praise of MV=PY
I used to think that the Equation of Exchange, MV=PY, was just a different way of writing the Cambridge Equation, M=kPY, with V=1/k. And of the two I preferred the M=kPY formulation, because it looked more like a money supply=money demand condition, and reminded us that V=1/k must be interpreted as desired velocity, if MV=PY […]
Too little financial innovation in mortgages?
While "financial conservatives" have been complaining about too much financial innovation, my complaint is that there's been too little. Why can't I use my house as an ATM, as long as I have sufficient remaining equity? Why can't I make positive, zero, or negative monthly payments on my mortgage, whenever I feel like it? The […]
Nick Rowe, Carleton University
I’m a Professor of Economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. I’m also a member of the CD Howe Institute’s Monetary Policy Council and the Centre for Monetary and Financial Economics.
On the upper bound of utility functions
It has been estimated that Queen Elizabeth the Second has made a pertinent comment on the weather on 245,015 separate occasion to perfect strangers, all of whom remembered the exact comment all their lives … if a random and arguably inaccurate estimate if the impending climate by one overpaid human being in a flower hat […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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