Category Canadian economy
What explains the weak growth in total factor productivity in non-renewable resource extraction industries?
McMaster University’s Oliver Loertscher and Pau Pujolas have a recent article in the Canadian Journal of Economics entitled “Canadian productivity growth: Stuck in the oil sands”. Here is the abstract: We study the behaviour of Canadian Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth over the past 60 years. We find that the observed stagnation during the last 20 years […]
Movements in income inequality in Canada, 1944-2010
Here are the estimates for the Gini coefficients for Canada, taken from individual tax files (see here for more about where the data came from):
What happened to real incomes in the 1970s?
Here are the estimates for average and median total incomes based on tax file data (see this post for details):
Project Link update: The evolution of the distribution of income in Canada, 1944-2010
Project Link has been updated; the Excel file with the data updated through to June 2021 is available here. I skipped the 2020 update for Project Link for a couple of reasons. There was obviously the distraction of the pandemic, but mainly because I hadn't yet finished the next extension. Every year, I try to […]
Rapid Vaccinations Can Help Avoid the `Third Wave’ in Ontario
The following is a guest post by Miguel Casares (Universidad Publica de Navarra, Spain), Paul Gomme (Concordia University), and Hashmat Khan (Carleton University) Of utmost importance is improving our understanding of the complex interactions between: (a) the epidemiology that describes the evolution of the coronavirus/COVID-19; and (b) the social and economic choices of individuals. Towards […]
Can the Great Barrington proposal save the economy?
The Great Barrington Declaration argues against universal lock-downs: Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal. Simple hygiene measures, such as hand washing and staying home when sick should be practiced by everyone to reduce the herd immunity threshold. Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching. Extracurricular […]
More Thoughts on a Better Income Support System for the Next Crisis
This post was written by Mike Veall of the Department of Economics at McMaster University. I appreciated the comments on my earlier post, where I suggested that a small monthly Basic Income system would have the advantage of being able to be scaled-up in a crisis. Incenting participation in the tax/transfer system is responsive to […]
A Small Basic Income as a Solution to the Magic List Problem
This post was written by Mike Veall of the Department of Economics at McMaster University. What if in a future crisis there is again a need to distribute money? As Jennifer Robson put it, “government doesn’t have a magic list with everybody’s name and addresses and bank accounts.” I was reminded of this when thinking […]
A Simple Micro/Macro Corona Tax Model
I want something you could teach to first or second year economics students. Using tools they already have in their toolkit. MICRO Start with a Demand and Supply model of the market for haircuts. If we put a $1 per haircut tax on buyers of haircuts, the demand curve shifts vertically down by $1, reducing […]
Relative supply shocks, Unobtainium, Walras’ Law, and the Coronavirus
Here's the basic idea: A temporary 100% output cut in 50% of the sectors (what the Coronavirus does) is very different from a 50% output cut in 100% of the sectors (what our intuitions might expect from supply shocks in aggregate macro models). The former can easily lead to deficient demand in the unaffected sectors; […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments