Category Canadian economy
Trade, Growth and … Brazil
In a recent address on global growth and Canadian export prospects to the Economic Club of Canada, the Bank of Canada’s Tiff Macklem noted that Canada’s share of world trade has been in decline for over a decade and that the loss of global trade share has been the second highest of the G-20. Given […]
Fiscal Clout and Federation Redesign
The Parliamentary Budget Office has issued a very pleasing report on federal fiscal sustainability but the flip side is that the provinces and territories are now not fiscally sustainable because of their rising health costs and the federal fiscal gap created by the change in the Canada Health Transfer escalator. According to Andrew Coyne, the […]
Shifting Populations, Shifting Economies
Statistics Canada just released its total population estimates for 2013 and the picture shows declining shares of population not just for Quebec and the Atlantic region, but also for parts of the west. While the population share of the western provinces has grown over the period 1983 to 2013, this increase is due to Alberta […]
Contrasting trends in Canadian and US median incomes
This is a graph of real Canadian median family incomes: What do you think the relevant trend is for current policy?
The Differential Timing of the Great Depression
The Economic History Association meetings currently underway in Washington D.C. have a number of fascinating sessions including several on economic depression and financial crises. One paper by Thilo Albers (Humboldt University Berlin) and Martin Uebele (University of Groningen) is particularly interesting given that it presents a new monthly international dataset for the interwar period (1925-1936) […]
Higher Education Financing Takes Two to Tango
Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates has spent the last week on his blog going through an analysis of the financing of Canadian universities. His final post on the subject today provides a convenient summary showing that while total dollars per student has grown substantially over time, the academic operating side of the university […]
The Historical Constants of Affluence
According to the recently released results of the National Household Survey, the top 1% of Canadians aged 15 and over earn $191,000 a year and tend to be predominantly male, university educated, married, most likely over the age of 45, and live in larger metropolitan centers. It would appear that little has changed since the […]
For David Andolfatto: why I switched from IT to NGDPLT
This post is for David, but it's mostly about me. I used to think that inflation targeting was probably roughly the best monetary policy to follow. Then, a couple of years ago, I began to think that NGDP level targeting was probably roughly the best monetary policy to follow. This post is about why I […]
Canadian Macro Performance: Better than the G-7 but…
We are of course quite used to repeated claims that Canada has outperformed all other G-7 countries in job creation and GDP growth during the recovery from the 2009 recession. Our better fiscal performance is also trotted out especially with respect to the net debt to GDP ratio. However, if instead of the G-7, we […]
Is this a bank bailout by the CMHC? Quotas vs tariffs.
I learn from the CBC that the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation has imposed a quota of $350 million per month per individual bank (or other lender) on the amount of mortgage-backed securities it will guarantee. Presumably the CMHC did this because the Federal government wanted to put a cap of $85 billion on the […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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