Monthly Archives: April 2010
The CPI release: blip, counter-blip, or the beginning of the parity pass-through?
Today's CPI release shows a reduction in pretty much every measure of inflation, so talk of just how high and how fast the Bank of Canada will increase interest rates will be a bit subdued for a few days – although last I checked, the CAD was still trading above parity.
Taxation in Canada – Part III: The Case Against Personal Income Taxes
When I was an undergraduate, I remember hearing the following argument from a very smart non-economics student friend of mine: There is no real benefit to lowering income taxes – it’s an illusion. Yes, if income taxes are lowered, people might decide to work more overtime. But what would they be doing with that time […]
Eurozone: is this the big one?
I'm scared again. I haven't felt this scared for over a year. Things were starting to look better, in Canada in particular, but around the world more generally. Now Greek bond yields are shooting up. I was worried about the Eurozone in January 2009. And again in December. Maybe it was just my Euroskeptic "Anglo-Saxon" […]
Correcting DeLong
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montreal. Brad DeLong is a very smart guy who writes something like 2,000 blog posts a year. But I have to correct him on a recent one….. The topic is financial regulation and what people knew in the 90s versus what we know now. Part of […]
Canada and the bank tax
The G20 meetings look to be a barnburner: Ottawa rejects IMF bank tax recommendation, shows flavour of summit to come: On Wednesday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty once again flatly refused to co-operate with any notion of taxing banks, even though the latest overture has come from the International Monetary Fund itself… [W]hile Ottawa supported the […]
The SEC case no one is talking about…
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montréal. The news last week that the SEC was filing charges against Goldman Sachs was a bombshell; it dominated the day's headlines and continues to fill blog-space. As it happens, that announcement came the same day as a report that the SEC would prefer that everyone […]
It’s game on at the Bank of Canada
Bank of Canada maintains overnight rate target at 1/4 per cent; removes conditional commitment. Now what? The Bank of Canada tries to avoid surprises when it can, and increasing interest rates when it has made a commitment not to would constitute a surprise. So removing the commitment – which itself it not much of a […]
Minimum wages and employment
"An increase in the minimum wage will raise workers' incomes, which will increase aggregate demand, which will increase output and employment. So would an increase in union wages." I remember hearing that argument a lot in the 1970s. You don't hear it as much nowadays, but it still lives on in the underworld of economic […]
A new addition to the Canadian economics blogroll
Stephen Williamson has started a blog, and has hit the ground running: I count 12 posts since his first post on April 2. Although his current position is at Washington University in St Louis MO, a quick glance at his bio page will explain why I have no compunction about claiming him as one of […]
As if we needed more fuel on the fire…
The Celebrating pointlessness: minimum wage edition thread has been going on strong for over two weeks. Can we turn the fire into a raging inferno? From today’s Huffington Post: Minimum Wage, and Controversy, Reaches Distant U.S. Islands, on a Government Accountability Office on the minimum wage which was released today. A PDF of the study […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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