Monthly Archives: November 2018
Keynesian Beauty Contest SRAS shocks
[I'm not fully happy with this post. I think it does an OK job of explaining SRAS shocks that the central bank accommodates. But it doesn't say what happens when the central bank does not accommodate SRAS shocks. And I would like to integrate George Selgin's analysis of SRAS shocks in Less Than Zero, which […]
Becoming Sustainable: The Six Stages of Provincial-Territorial Government Health Spending
The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has released its 22nd annual edition of National Health Expenditure Trends covering the period 1975 to 2018 and the basic highlights are as follows: Total health expenditure is expected to reach $253.5 billion or $6,839 per Canadian in 2018. In 2018, total health expenditure is expected to rise […]
Australian Economic Growth in Longer Term Perspective
A recent issue of The Economist highlighted the stellar economic performance of Australia – or as it was termed, “The Wonder Down Under” – arguing its economy is most arguably the most successful in the rich world. Australia has apparently not seen a recession for 27 years, seen its median income has grown four times […]
Bicycle Disequilibrium Theory
Suppose you need a bicycle to get to work. Suppose bicycles are a common property resource, because bike locks don't work. Every night the workers deposit their bicycles in the bike bank, and in the morning it's first come first served. And suppose that sometimes there aren't enough bicycles to go around. So sometimes the […]
Tracking the Bank of Canada’s staff projections through the 2008-9 recession
The Bank of Canada has released an archive of the staff projections prepared for the Governing Council for the quarterly Monetary Policy Reports. There's a five year lag, so the most recent set of projections are the ones prepared in 2013Q4. While these projections don't answer the question "What was the Governing Council thinking?", it […]
Has Canada’s female employment rate maxed out?
In their 2018 Budget, the Liberal government committed to increased full-time employment of women as part of its gender equality agenda. Is that goal attainable? The employment rate of women in Canada increased steadily from 1976 up until the 2008 financial crisis. Since that time, the percentage of women over 25 who are employed has been […]
Are education attainment levels the root cause of all good earnings news?
An earlier post noted that the real earnings gains over the past 20 years were as clean an example of a composition effect as you're likely to see. Earnings among full-time workers with a given level of education have shown some modest growth over time, but average earnings growth for all full-time workers has been […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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