Category Livio Di Matteo
Forecasting the Future
I've always been a fan of science fiction and the other day came across an old anthology of Canadian science fiction on my downstairs shelf that contains a copy of a pamphlet written in 1883 forecasting what Canada was supposed to be like in 1983. The actual author is apparently unknown but wrote the pamphlet […]
Wealth and Its Distribution: Tomorrow is Yesterday
Wealth and income inequality is a big issue and I thought some historical perspective on wealth inequality might be interesting given that my research to date has led me to conclude that little has changed for the bottom of the wealth distribution at least in terms of relative wealth shares. While there has been the […]
Health Outcomes & Health Financing: An Example
I finally got around to looking at the OECD Health Data release for 2011 and as is my habit, I spend some time looking at the overview reports and charts as well as playing around with some of the data. The first chart provided by the OECD that I want to draw your attention to […]
Is There a Hauser’s Law for Canada Too?
Economics has a number of “Laws” floating around that are rooted in empirical observation and then put forth as natural inexorable systemic laws. For example, in public finance, there is Wagner’s Law of Expanding State Activity, which links the size of the public sector to income. In health economics, there is Roemer’s Law, which […]
A Longer Term View of U.S. Public Debt
With the August 2nd deadline for raising the United States public debt ceiling looming, it might be useful to take a longer-term view on exactly how bad the US debt situation is at least with respect to the past.
What Does a Canadian Housing Bust Look Like?
Housing prices in Canada and the possibility of a burst housing bubble were back in the news during this past week. A report by Capital Economics said that housing prices in Canada could fall by as much as 25 percent over the next three years as a result of a loss in market fundamentals that […]
Ontario’s Recession Battered Families
Recessions generate many statistics but in the end its all about the people and their families. Statistics Canada today released family income data for sub-provincial areas for 2009 taken from the 2009 personal income tax returns.
Economics, History and the Shrinking Middle
As an economic historian by training, I’m always aware of the unique ground straddled by practitioners of the cliometric craft. We are economists by training and in terms of many of the questions we are interested in, but much of our research focuses on collection and analysis of primary sources.
Transfer Dependency’s New Friends
Well, I decided to finish off my postings on provincial revenues and go to the Federal Fiscal Reference Tables which provide a federal transfer revenue variable for each province from 1987/87 to 2009/10 as well as provincial revenues. I have a plot of nominal per capita transfer revenues and not surprisingly it shows an upward […]
Are Canada’s Housing Markets Overvalued?
Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney is going to be in Vancouver on Wednesday June 15th to deliver a speech on the country’s housing market. There is a lot of interest as to whether or not the housing market is overvalued so I thought I would take a look at housing prices and markets using […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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