Category Livio Di Matteo
Friedrich List: The Un-Adam Smith
Here is something a little different. My history of economic thought course has just finished up with John Stuart Mill and I will be moving into the socialist reaction to classical economic theory. Most of us probably associate Marx and socialism with criticism of the classical school but there was also an early non-socialist reaction […]
General Gluts, Secular Stagnation and the World Economy
The head of the International Monetary Fund warned today on her visit to Beijing that the global economy faces the risk of a "lost decade" with little or no growth and that without action, the world faces worsening financial instability and a possible collapse of demand. This news item also coincided with my morning lecture […]
Dealing with the Debt Crisis: A Greek Maneuver?
It has been a dizzying week around the world as fears of Greek debt default lead to yet another roller-coaster ride on world stock markets after Papandreou called for a domestic referendum on the European led rescue plan.
Does Economic Growth Lower Workplace Absenteeism?
It’s just past the middle of the term and the number of students coming to class seems to have taken a bit of a drop and there seem to be a lot of people off sick. It has also been a particularly gloomy few days in the news with talk of recessions and rumors of […]
Visions for Universities
My friend and PhD Thesis advisor Peter George was awarded the David C. Smith Award for Significant Contribution to Scholarship and Policy on Higher Education in Canada at a dinner on October 13th hosted by the Council of Universities. As part of the celebration, Peter George delivered a speech that drew upon his three-term experience […]
Revisiting the Sustainability of Post-Secondary Education
I decided to try and dig a little deeper on the issue of the sustainability of post-secondary education spending in Canada by looking at the numbers in real per capita terms and by province. As I mentioned in my earlier post, while fiscal sustainability is a term generally used in the health care policy debate, […]
Canada’s Provincial Debt Divide
The release of the 2011 Federal Fiscal Reference Tables is a good opportunity for me to refresh myself with an assortment of public finance statistics. What caught my attention this year was the evolution of the east-west divide in provincial public debt.
Sustainable Universities
Judging from some of the ruminating going on in the media lately, it would appear that Canadian universities will soon be facing a new assault under the mantra of sustainability. Some of this is a spillover from the United States where rising tuition fees have exceeded the general inflation rate fostering a view that higher […]
The Long Hand of Medieval Economic Thought…
In the current Ontario election campaign, both the Ontario Conservatives and the NDP have put in their platforms pledges to remove the HST from home hydro bills and home heating. It is argued that these items are not luxuries and that the HST has made life less affordable for families. The NDP goes a step […]
A Lament for Public Policy
In New Directions for Intelligent Government in Canada: Papers in Honour of Ian Stewart, Don Drummond reflects on the state of public policy analysis in Canada and whether the rigour of policy analysis that existed in the past still exists today though he wisely cautions that “tales of the good old days are often the […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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