Category Stephen Gordon
“How the ultra-rich get even richer”
That's the title of my latest column on high-income concentration at Canadian Business. Notwithstanding the title, the article's main point is that we don't know how it's happening.
BC bleg: Are its politicians crazy, or just stupid?
BC is several thousand kilometers and three time zones away, so much of what happens there passes below my personal radar. But the HST file is something I've tried to pay attention to, and the news from BC just seems to go from bad to worse. I have a couple of questions, and I'm hoping […]
Stimulus? What stimulus?
Robert Reich on the risks of a 'double-dip' recession in the US: The only reason the economy isn’t in a double-dip recession already is because of three temporary boosts: the federal stimulus (of which 75 percent has been spent), near-zero interest rates (which can’t continue much longer without igniting speculative bubbles), and replacements (consumers have […]
What are we, chopped liver?
Sigh. The Economist has assembled a group of 50 economists from around the world to Discuss Important Matters; I invite you to play the game of "Spot the Excluded G7 Country".
The anglosphere and high-income concentration
Anthony Atkinson and Andrew Leigh have a working paper on the strikingly similar patterns in high-end income concentration in five English-speaking countries.
Trends in OECD corporate income tax rates
From the OECD's Tax Database (Table II.1): The last few decades has seen extensive work documenting the deleterious effects of corporate income taxes – especially for small open economies. These lessons seem to have been taken to heart by policy-makers.
Corporate income taxes: a reading list
Like many Canadians, I am dreading the prospect of a federal election. We all have our own reasons for doing so, and here's mine. Now that the Liberals have announced that they – along with the NDP – will oppose the reduction in the corporate income tax rate that is planned for next year's budget, […]
Ban the penny! And the nickel, while we’re at it
Deputy Governor Pierre Duguay provides us with one of the more interesting trial balloons to come out of the Bank of Canada in a very long while: [T]he Bank views the possible elimination of the penny in terms of the potential impact on inflation, and has conducted some preliminary research on this issue. The findings, […]
An update on the concentration of income in Canada
Yesterday saw an odd coincidence: The Globe and Mail ran a bunch of articles about the 10-figure salaries earned by a small number of people ([1],[2],[3]). McMaster University's Mike Veall passed along updated data (preliminary paper and data files [1], [2], [3]) confirming the trend in which income is increasingly concentrated among a small number […]
Maybe the Bank of Canada won’t raise interest rates on June 1
The April CPI release is out; here is the updated graph of core inflation rates over various horizons: Core inflation started trending above the 2% target in November, and this trend explains why the Bank felt it necessary to use its April 20 interest rate decision to release itself from the conditional commitment to hold […]
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