Category Stephen Gordon
Labour market flows revisited
It's been a while since I've looked at patterns in gross labour market flows; the last time was here. The basic methodology is taken from Stephen Tapp's CJE article, in which he extracts labour market transitions from the Labour Force Survey Public Use Microdata Files. Not all transitions are covered by the LFS questionnaire, but […]
Ottawa as Robin Hood
As the eurozone bumps along from major crisis to minor crisis to existential crisis, the point is often made that a key feature of successful monetary unions that is missing in the eurozone is a system of transfers. These transfers act a sort of compensation for renouncing the option of pursuing an independent monetary policy.
Another rant about Statistics Canada’s Attention Deficit Disorder
I've done this before, but I've had a very bad day and I need to vent. I've started work on a forecasting project for the Canadian data, focusing on the short- and medium-term outlook. The first task is to see what sort of data are available, and once again, the frustrating answer is 'not near […]
Doug Saunders has written a dreadful column about the “resource curse”, and I’m going to explain why it’s dreadful
This column by Doug Saunders on the "resource curse" in last Saturday's Globe and Mail is quite dreadful: When the price of oil is the foundation of your country’s economy, a sudden plunge to half its value focuses the mind wonderfully, doesn’t it? One's heart sinks at the very first sentence: the premise is wildy at odds […]
A short history of the Canadian one per cent
Any sensible policy designed to address the concentration of income at the top of the Canadian income distribution over the past thirty years or so has to be based on a working model that explains how and why it happened in the first place. And we still don't have one. We still don't even have […]
The manufacturing trap
Oil prices are down lately, and over at the Broadbent Institute, Andrew Jackson is worried about the staples trap:
The great tuition debate: A rejoinder
This is a response to this, which is in turn a response to this and this, which was a response to this, which was a comment on this old E-Lab post of mine. This is old, well-covered ground, so I'll be as brief as I may.
How big has the effect of increases in the minimum wage been on youth employment?
One of the more puzzling features of the Canadian labour market in the last few years recovery has been the stubborn refusal of youth employment rates to recover from the recession: There may a relatively simple (partial) explanation. This is taken from a recent Statistics Canada study on trends in the minimum wage: There seems […]
Action bias and the political economy of penalty kicks
Most penalty kicks result in a goal; this is why soccer players go to such comical lengths to draw a penalty. The distance between the ball and the goal is so short that goaltenders don't have time to react; they have to commit to a strategy as the ball is being kicked. The usual strategy […]
The Economist on WCI
The Economist has a story on the state of the Canadian economy and it features an appearance by Livio Di Matteo: Yet luck played a large, unacknowledged part, says Livio Di Matteo, an academic and contributor to Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, the world’s best-named economics blog. It's official: WCI is now the best-named economic blog. Take […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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