Monthly Archives: January 2012
The Gambling Economy: A Zero Sum Game?
Two stories in the Toronto Star this week have left me wondering if there is a new grand strategy at work for transforming Ontario’s economy in the wake of its manufacturing decline.
Macroeconomics and the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge
This is what we teach, right at the very beginning of macro: 1. Macroeconomics is about GDP. 2. On the expenditure side, GDP is divided into Y=C+I+G+NX 3. On the income side, GDP is divided into Y=C+S+T Now read what Borges said on a closely related subject. We don't have to think of macroeconomics that […]
It’s still too early to tell what is going on in the Quebec labour market
I still don't know why – or even if – the Quebec labour market is doing as badly as the numbers I've presented here and in Economy Lab suggest. It turns out that almost all of the bad news comes from two consecutive bad LFS numbers from November and December. As I discussed here, there's a […]
Corporate Profits and Investment in Machinery and Equipment in Canada
I am writing a piece on the Electro-Motive dispute in Canada and needed data on equipment and machinery. I had forgotten which CANSIM series I was looking for and asked if anyone knew. Reader Chris Hylarides pointed me towards a piece written by… Stephen Gordon. Not only did Stephen's piece have the data I was looking […]
Why “saving” should be abolished
I mean the concept, not the activity. Because it's the most confusing concept in macroeconomics.
Something is wrong with the Quebec economy
I generally don't pay much attention to the month-to-month changes in the provincial employment numbers, but there's something going on in Quebec.
The slow speed of recovery, PSST, plucking, and skewed news
Judging by output, employment, and unemployment, the Canadian economy hit bottom around the middle of 2009. Two and a half years later, output, employment and unemployment have recovered a lot. But like most observers I believe, and certainly hope, that we have not yet had a full recovery to the long run sustainable path. Why […]
Bob Murphy plays with the debt burden
I don't normally do blog posts with just a link to someone else's blog post. We aren't that sort of blog. But I'm going to make an exception in this case. Bob Murphy's latest post on the burden of the debt is very clear, very comprehensive on both sides of the debate, and very funny. […]
Are Panic and Posturing Good Ways to Reduce the Deficit?
The Ontario government’s final approach to deficit reduction has begun with selected leaks of economist Don Drummond’s “first draft” of his review via media interviews designed to combine deficit reduction with high drama. A column by Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star titled “Brace for a firestorm across Ontario” outlines cuts as high as […]
Putting the Econ into Econometrics
I have the 1988 and 2009 editions Gujarati and Porter's Basic Econometrics in front of me. Chapter 1 has been updated for the 21st century: The Internet has literally revolutionized data gathering. If you just "surf the net" with a keyword (e.g. exchange rates), you will be swamped with all kinds of data sources. In […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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