Category Stephen Gordon
On trends in employment rates in Canada
I drew attention to Statistics Canada's updated projections for demographic trends a few weeks ago; the reason for being concerned about them is that unless worker productivity and/or rates of return on retirement savings increase dramatically, per-capita incomes are likely to fall as 8-12 per cent of the population ages out of the workforce. Of […]
Another Canadian economics blog! And yet another!
The University of Victoria economics department has provided us with two – count 'em, 2 – new economics blogs in the last few months. David Giles' Econometrics Beat has been up for a while now, and he is to be congratulated for writing a blog on the required course that almost all economics students would […]
Why Canadian economists should worry less about productivity
Canada's famously low levels of productivity and low rates of productivity growth have preoccupied Canadian economists for decades. But increased productivity – as it is usually measured – is not a sufficient condition for higher standards of living. It's not even necessary. For instance, the post-2001 fall in Canadian productivity is simply a mathematical artifact […]
The US GDP revisions aren’t as bad as you think. They’re much worse.
The BEA's advance estimate for 2011Q2 GDP growth was accompanied by news that 2011Q1 growth had been revised from 1.8% to 0.4%. This is bad enough, but the data revisions are much, much worse than that. Here is a graph of the data that were archived by the St Louis Fed last month, along with […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2011Q2 GDP growth
The May 2011 GDP numbers are out, so it's time for my quarterly attempt to provide an estimate for quarterly GDP growth a month before Statistics Canada releases its first estimates – the most recent exercise is here. This is done by using simple linear regression model of monthly GDP growth on monthly LFS data […]
How do we get from here to Armageddon?
This is essentially a rerun of this earlier post, which produced no answers I found convincing. It's provoked by Livio's recent post, which produced comments raising questions similar to one that I've been asking for many months now. The question is: what are the mechanics behind "there's a housing bubble in Vancouver" (it's always Vancouver) […]
This is what a balance-sheet recession looks like, and it’s not pretty
I had never heard the expression "balance-sheet recession" before this recent episode, and it's time I got around to a comparison of the household balance sheets of the US and Canada. Of all my "Canada is not the US" posts, this is the one that makes me most grateful.
Foreign ownership and foreign control
Friday's release of Canada's international investment position for 2011Q1 shows that Canada is a net debtor nation, as it has been for its entire history – with the notable exception of a fleeting moment that was subsequently revised away. But we're not net debtors in all asset classes: Canadian direct holding of assets abroad are […]
Population aging and labour’s share of income
There aren't many statistical regularities in macroeconomics, and very few of them are as important as the apparent long-term stability of the shares of income that go to capital and labour. This 'stylized fact' was first noted by Nicholas Kaldor back in 1957, and his list of stylized facts shows up in every macroeconomics sequence. […]
The sources of the Canadian recession and recovery
This is one of those posts where I present data in graph form so that people – in particular, I – can get a feel for what's been happening. Today's entry is on how the various components of aggregate demand contributed to the recession and recovery. We sometimes get too focused on the particularities of […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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