Category Canadian economy
Resources and the Economic Future
Well, it was one of those interesting coincidences. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver unveiled new figures generated by Natural Resources Canada that apparently demonstrate that natural resources account for almost 20 percent of economic activity in Canada.
What’s Up with Carney & Flaherty?
Well, I’m still sifting through my thoughts trying to exactly understand what was behind the corporate “dead money” debate last week. After a speech to the Canadian Auto Workers, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney drew attention to the rising amounts of cash in the bank accounts of Canadian firms and commented to the effect […]
Economic Forecasting: Is Google Trends the Future?
Google Trends is a quick and popular way to assess the importance of ideas, events and trends by looking at the results of people’s web searches. In fact, as is well known, it has been used to study flu activity based on searches for flu related terms. And, right here on WCI, it has been […]
Why is Ontario’s Government Being So Mean to Its Teachers?
Being in Toronto for the Rimini Conference in Economics and Finance 2012 and standing in the shadow of Queen’s Park has led me to contemplate why the Ontario government is suddenly being so mean to its teachers. After years of Dalton McGuinty as the education premier with an expansion of education funding and programs, the […]
Bureaucratic Entropy?
The Association of Ontario Municipalities is having its annual conference August 19-22 in Ottawa, the mother city of all governments in Canada. Among the items on the agenda are the keynote address on: “new secrets to leadership with five powerful tools to improve negotiation effectiveness”, a speech by Ontario’s premier (followed by the opposition leaders […]
As the Federation Turns: Quetarian Public Finances
Quebec and Ontario, the twin pillars of the Canadian federation, have much in common given that they share the economic space of the Windsor-Quebec axis – an economic region nestled around the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterway. Once upon a time, they were even one province but that fiery marriage had its ups and downs and […]
Births Revisited: Births, Population and Per Capita Income
Well, after my last post I finally got around to calculating another measure of the birth rate – births per capita. Total births are a useful aggregate but the measure does not adjust for population size. There are other fertility measures out there such as births per woman aged 15 to 44 years but per […]
Whatever happened to Price Level Path Targeting?
Before the recession, Inflation Targeting was the Champ, and Price Level Path Targeting was the Challenger. A strong Challenger. The Champ was the champ, but the Challenger had a lot of support. A lot of people thought he should and eventually would replace the Champ. People argued about who was better overall, but all agreed […]
Recessions and Making Babies
It would appear that the severity of the global recession is affecting fertility rates in many countries. The fertility rate as measured by the number of live births per woman in Europe has dropped substantially in a number of countries according to The Economist. These results suggest that rather than lowering the opportunity cost of […]
Game of Premiers: The Premiers, Health & Public Policy
Well, Canada’s premiers and territorial leaders are gathering in Halifax this week engaged in their version of the Game of Thrones with hurt feelings and fiscal uncertainty rather than beheadings, swordplay and pillaging the most likely dire consequences. Among the issues planned for discussion are energy and health care. Not on the official agenda will […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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