Category Media
An open letter to the leaders of Canada’s federal political parties from economists teaching in Canadian colleges and universities
The press release and the list of signatories (more than 230 and counting) are over here. Here's the letter: One of the few issues on which most economists agree is the need for public policy to protect the environment. Why so much agreement? Because in the absence of policy, individuals generally don’t take the environmental […]
Merrill Lynch Canada displays the same acumen that sent its parent company to oblivion
I really don't understand this. At all. Canada could be headed for mortgage meltdown, says Merrill Lynch Canada: In a report issued Wednesday, Merrill Lynch Canada economists said many Canadian households are more financially overextended than their counterparts in the United States or Britain. They said it's only a matter of time before the "tipping […]
Why Canada’s MSM is doing an incredibly bad job of covering the election
Andrew Coyne makes the unassailable point that the MSM is making a horrible hash of covering the election campaign. And he also provides some insight as to why. As ever, it comes down to the incentives that journalists face: Read the coverage in any major daily on any given day. Watch the television. It's not […]
Why aren’t there more stories like this in the MSM?
An economics lesson for Stephen Harper (and everyone else, come to that), in which Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner gives Greg Mankiw a call. It's a clear and readable explanation of the economics of climate change policy, in 800 words or fewer. And all a journalist had to do was call an economist and ask […]
Quebec is better governed than the US. Why shouldn’t the market price its bonds accordingly?
There's been a certain amount of hilarity (here, here, and no doubt elsewhere in the English-speaking media) about this story: Tim Backshall, chief strategist at Credit Derivatives Research, said the price implied that the US was more likely to default on its obligations than Japan, Germany, France, Quebec, the Netherlands and several Scandinavian countries. Traders […]
Election markets are silly
I understand the theory behind the claim that election markets might be more useful tools for predicting election outcomes than opinion polls: Pollsters ask about current opinion ('If an election were held today, …'), and election markets focus attention on what really matters: what actually happens on election day. Poll respondents have essentially no incentive […]
Self-sufficiency in food: always and everywhere a bad, bad idea
I'm back from vacation, and the quality of economic analysis in our nation's Newspaper of Record hasn't changed: Everything is not peachy: From households to nations, we need to get serious about food self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency isn't a sexy idea. At best, people who say they're interested in being self-sufficient are stereotyped as dour, old-fashioned rural […]
The forex market is dumber than a sack of hammers
Or maybe it’s just the people who comment on its gyrations. A Reuters piece from today is a case in point: Loonie slips on US economic outlook: The Canadian dollar slid lower against the U.S. dollar as investors were loath to bet on the currency, given Canada’s heavy dependency on the waning U.S. economy… Huh? […]
How will the subprime crisis affect the Canadian economy?
I don’t really know, but that didn’t stop me from accepting an invitation from the local Radio-Canada station to do a radio interview on the subject (in French). You can listen to it here.
Mercantilism at the Globe and Mail
Today’s Globe and Mail’s editorial on the prospect of a Canada-South Korea trade agreement is just silly: Free trade? First, lower the barriers: To the dismay of some Canadian exporters, free-trade talks with South Korea have reached an impasse. But that shouldn’t be the end of any smart free trader’s world, given South Korea’s refusal […]
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