Category Stephen Gordon
The bank tax: more reasons for Canada to resist
Germany promises to keep pushing for a bank tax: Merkel to push financial reform at G20: German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday called for a global levy on banks, a new European rating agency and a co-ordinated exit from stimulus measures as Germany stepped up efforts to drive financial regulatory reform… She said Germany would […]
Connecting the eurozone crisis to the Canadian economy
This looks tricky. We should perhaps start with Tim Duy's suggestion that the eurozone crisis could be a net positive for the US: The European crisis, by keeping US interest rates in check and oil prices low, may do more to help the US recovery than hurt it. It makes sense to think of lower […]
The beer and pizza theory of the Canadian recession revisited
Philip Cross at StatsCan summarises the recent recession: [T]he 2008-2009 recession in GDP was driven more by prices than volume in Canada, while in the US it was driven more by volume than by prices.
The rebound in federal government revenues
The Department of Finance publishes monthly numbers for how much money it has taken in, and how much it has spent. It chooses to run these numbers on the afternoon of the last Friday of the month these days. I'm pretty sure that when the feds were running surpluses, these numbers were released first thing […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2010Q1 GDP growth
It's time to update my series of posts (2009Q1, 2009Q2, 2009Q3, 2009Q4) 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 boldly produce what Statistics Canada dares not attempt: a preliminary estimate for quarterly GDP […]
Frances Woolley joins Worthwhile Canadian Initiative
Regular readers will have noticed that in addition to contributing in the comments, Carleton University's Frances Woolley has written some very fine posts on her own (here and here). So it is with great pleasure that we announce that Frances has agreed to be a regular contributing blogger in her own right at WCI. Her […]
On the meme of the ‘surprisingly short and mild recession’
Two – count 'em – two opinion pieces today in which people pronounce them astounded at how the Not-So-Great-After-All Recession played out: Économie: le syndrome A(H1N1): Une analyse récente de la récession, dans le dernier numéro de l'Observateur économique de Statistique Canada, montre à quel point économistes, politiciens et médias se sont mis le doigt […]
The private and public costs and benefits of post-secondary education
It's handy – if not entirely accurate – to think of the decision to go to university as being one in which the costs and benefits of post-secondary education are weighed. Since governments control or influence many of the key factors in this decision, this is a convenient framework for policy-makers. But a similar exercise […]
The CPI release: blip, counter-blip, or the beginning of the parity pass-through?
Today's CPI release shows a reduction in pretty much every measure of inflation, so talk of just how high and how fast the Bank of Canada will increase interest rates will be a bit subdued for a few days – although last I checked, the CAD was still trading above parity.
Canada and the bank tax
The G20 meetings look to be a barnburner: Ottawa rejects IMF bank tax recommendation, shows flavour of summit to come: On Wednesday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty once again flatly refused to co-operate with any notion of taxing banks, even though the latest overture has come from the International Monetary Fund itself… [W]hile Ottawa supported the […]
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