Category Stephen Gordon
Live, on tape delay: It’s the 2011 federal budget
I'm off to the budget lockup, where I will be without internet access until the Minister of Finance starts to give his budget speech. I'll be writing for the Globe and Mail's budget page. Here is a short summary of what I'm looking at ex ante, and I'm scheduled to be a part of the […]
What are the policy implications of an under-valued Canadian dollar?
I wrote a post a few months ago on the curiously nonlinear relationship between the Canadian exchange rate and oil prices. Since then, the prices of oil and other commodities have continued to increase, and it is perhaps time to consider the policy implications of the kink at parity.
The federal deficit and the GST
My blogging has been light, partly because of this, partly because my teaching load this term is heavier than usual, and partly because I've been spending so much time trying to get a good feel for the numbers that will form the background of the federal budget scheduled for March 22. I keep thinking "Okay, […]
Livio Di Matteo joins Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
As many of you are no doubt aware, Lakehead University's Livio Di Matteo has been writing on economic policy for quite some time for various newspapers and on his own blog, Northern Economist. We are happy to announce that Livio has accepted our invitation to blog at WCI as well; he will be making his […]
A comment on comments
While we are happy to have people read our posts and to discuss the points raised therein, we would ask people to remember that personal attacks and abusive comments will not be tolerated. There's been a recent uptick in such occurrences, and I'd like to nip this in the bud. That is all.
The sources of the federal deficit revisited
There were a couple of puzzling things in my recent post on the sources of the federal defict, and I think I've solved the puzzle. I made a mistake.
How the federal government went from persistent surpluses to persistent deficits
Update: See this follow-up post, which corrects some mistakes made below. I've added comments pointing out which parts needed revision. In the early years of the millenium, the federal government ran what appeared to be an indestructible series of budgetary surpluses. No matter how many tax cuts were implemented, it ended each year with a […]
Statistics Canada under siege
If there's one thing that has prevented me from despairing completely about the débâcle that is and will be the 2011 census, it's been my faith in the professionalism and expertise of the people who work at Statistics Canada. Their present political masters may be deaf to reason, but this is only a temporary state […]
The Politician’s Syllogism, the minimum wage and the welfare effects of random redistributions of income
We're all familiar with the concept, but for those who weren't aware that it had been formalised, given a title and a Wikipedia entry, the Politician's Syllogism goes like this: We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this. And so it is with the minimum wage. Poverty and inequality are problems […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2010Q4 GDP growth
Statistics Canada released their estimates for November GDP gowth on Monday, and it was relatively good news: an increase of 4.4% at annual rates. But we shouldn't get to excited. According to the small backcasting (no, I did not make that word up) model I've been using for the past few years, the 2010Q4 number […]
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