Category Livio Di Matteo
Government Spending and Crime
I’ve been doing some data exploration on public sector spending and societal outcomes and have some preliminary results that have caused me to puzzle about what they might mean. I’ve been looking at annual data for OECD countries (33 countries) over the period 2000 to 2010 and the relationship between public sector size and crime […]
Universities, Public Funding & Entrepreneurship: The Consequences of Risk
Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates asked some interesting questions in his morning blog post. The world of university funding in Canada is changing – there is more money overall for universities but governments have been paying a declining share of university operating budgets with the remainder coming from tuition and assorted sources of […]
Inheritance
Well, Ontario has a new finance minister – Charles Sousa – and according to the Toronto Star: “Charles Sousa, the two-term Mississauga South MPP who finished fifth in last month’s leadership race, will succeed the retiring Finance Minister Dwight Duncan at the treasury. An affable former Royal Bank executive, Sousa inherits a $11.9-billion deficit that […]
Is Economic Growth Really Ending?
Robert Gordon has argued in his recent NBER paper “Is U.S. Economic Growth Over? Faltering Innovation Confronts the Six Headwinds” that growth rates have slowed and we are reverting to very low historical growth rates and indeed a period of economic stagnation. However, what I find intriguing is that an examination of some long-term data […]
Toilets, Governments and Incentives
In my morning newspaper, I came across a hardware store flyer advertising a great new innovation – toilet with pump! Essentially, along with your regular toilet, an additional water storage tank and pump is installed that allows you to store recycled water used from your sink, tub, or shower and then use it when you […]
Why Is Manufacturing Special?
Andrew Coyne has an excellent piece in the National Post dealing with why there are no good reasons for corporate handouts in the wake of yet another round of assistance to the automobile sector. He asks what the economic rationale for this assistance is – that is, what is the economic value? He argues that […]
Leviathan, Exit, Voice and Ontario Teachers
The last few weeks has seen the death of two economists – James Buchanan and Albert O. Hirschman – whose work has influenced my intellectual development and thinking over the years. Their thoughts combined with tomorrow’s “political action” by Ontario teachers against the soon to expire McGuinty government has caused me to think about what […]
Ideology, Business Cycles and Macroeconomics
Being more of an empirical bent, I do not generally indulge in the analysis of macroeconomic theory as thinking about it often causes me to recall what I think was a quote by John Kenneth Galbraith something to the effect that “Macroeconomics is like a religion, nobody truly knows what comes in the hereafter.” More […]
The Year Ahead
The New Year is when we try to look ahead and project what we think the economy will be like. There is no shortage of forecasts from banks, international economic agencies and independent forecasters as to how the Canadian, US and world economies will fare over the next year.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Recent Comments