Category Stephen Gordon
What were they thinking? One view
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montréal. Krugman on Sunday bemoaned the thinking at the US Fed, writing So I just read the latest speech from Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed; it’s one of the most depressing things I’ve read lately, and given what I read that’s saying a lot. Much […]
The economics of tax incidence: paying the tax is not the same as bearing the burden
One of the more important things that distinguishes economists from non-economists is a familiarity with the notion of tax incidence. The statutory incidence of a tax (who sends the cheque to the Receiver-General?) is usually very different from its economic incidence (who is out of pocket?). The basic intuition is simple enough. We all understand […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2010Q2 GDP growth
It's time to update my series of posts (2009Q1, 2009Q2, 2009Q3, 2009Q4, 2010Q1) in which I try to take the GDP numbers from the first two months of a given quarter, mix them with the LFS numbers from the third month, and concoct a preliminary estimate for quarterly GDP growth. The BEA released theirs yesterday […]
The federal deficit bottoms out
The most recent numbers from the Fiscal Monitor confirm that the deficit has started to shrink. These data are monthly and have important seasonal factors (particularly at the end of the fiscal year), so I've been tracking the 12-month moving sums. These don't quite correspond to the annual numbers, but they give us a good […]
Ninety percent worries
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montréal Paul Krugman picked a fight with Ken Rogoff today. The subject is how much to worry about the run up in government debt in the US and Europe. The Financial Times has been running a series of articles on the subject and Krugman claims that […]
The economics of census data
One of the surprising things about the census fiasco is that of all the publicy-provided services that small-government advocates could target, the census is very near the bottom of the list of priorities. Many of the services provided by governments could and perhaps should be produced by the private sector. But the economics of databases […]
A question for Maxime Bernier
Maxime Bernier was Minister of Industry during the 2006 census, and he's now saying that he received many complaints: As industry minister during the 2006 census, Bernier said he was inundated with privacy complaints over a five- to six-week period. "I received an average of 1,000 e-mails a day during the census to my MP […]
Libertarians and the census
The announced reasons for making the 2011 census long form voluntary is that it is 'intrusive' and that it is 'coercive' to make it mandatory. If this were the the position of a principled, reality-based libertarian government, then it would be a powerful argument. But it isn't.
Voluntary surveys, mandatory surveys and StatsCan expertise
This post was written by Kevin Milligan of the Department of Economics at the University of British Columbia. I'd like to add something to Stephen's "Blame Stats Canada" post from yesterday about the government's response to the Census imbroglio.
“Blame Stats Canada!”
This is interesting: [Industry Minister Tony Clement] added that he took the privacy concerns to Statistics Canada and asked they be incorporated into the next census. “They gave me options and we chose one of those options,” he said. “This is a methodology that Statistics Canada offered to us and if it's good enough for […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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