Author Archives: wciecon
Reader survey: feedback and comments
Well, it's been just over a week since we posted the Reader Survey, which is a good time to take stocks of the responses.
Comparing employment growth in Canada and the US over the longer term
A recurring theme in discussions about what we might expect from an eventual US recovery is that it will be long and painful. This is not entirely due to the severity of the current recession. As Michael Mandel notes, the recent drop in US employment capped a decade in which employment growth was already slower […]
Don’t borrowing-constrained households spend more of a tax cut??
One of the standard arguments against the Ricardian Equivalence Proposition is that some households are borrowing-constrained. They want to borrow and spend against their future income, but can't find anyone to lend them money. So when the government gives them a tax cut, financed by higher future taxes, the government is effectively lending them the […]
Monetary and fiscal policy ought normally move together
We normally think of monetary and fiscal policy as alternative methods of stabilising fluctuations in aggregate demand. It is only in abnormal times, like the present, when central banks' interest rate instruments are at or near the zero lower bound, that we might want to use both monetary and fiscal policy together. Only if we […]
The economic impact of canoeing
Seeing the path on the rocks worn by millions of passing feet on an old portage just upstream of Ottawa reminds you that what is now a short detour off a recreational walking trail was once the trans-Canada highway. Canoes once had a very large economic impact in Canada. Now they have very little.
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 […]
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