Category Stephen Gordon
Why we should be paying more attention to the SEPH employment numbers
The first Friday of every month is Employment Data Day in Canada and the US. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics releases employment data from its Current Population Survey (CPS – the household survey) and its Current Employment Statistics survey (CES – the payroll or establishment survey). For reasons I'll get into later, the establishment […]
The federal deficit is shrinking
The last few releases of the Fiscal Monitor show that the federal deficit is finally starting to shrink appreciably.
Quebec employment watch: le mystère persiste
The hunt for data that are consistent with the sharp drop in employment reported by the Labour Force Survey in November and December ([1],[2]) continues. Today's release of initial Employment Insurance claims for November don't look like what we'd see in an economy that was seeing a sharp jump in unemployment:
The Bank of Canada revises up its forecast
There's not been a lot of drama in the Bank of Canada's recent announcements for its overnight rate target, nor does it look as though there will be for several months. As long as there's a non-negligible risk that the eurozone will produce a financial crisis, the Bank of Canada won't be in any hurry […]
It’s still too early to tell what is going on in the Quebec labour market
I still don't know why – or even if – the Quebec labour market is doing as badly as the numbers I've presented here and in Economy Lab suggest. It turns out that almost all of the bad news comes from two consecutive bad LFS numbers from November and December. As I discussed here, there's a […]
Something is wrong with the Quebec economy
I generally don't pay much attention to the month-to-month changes in the provincial employment numbers, but there's something going on in Quebec.
Is Ontario to Canada as Spain is to Europe?
I sometimes like to look at Canada through the eurozone lens: both are monetary unions in which certain regions have done better than others. For example, there are some interesting parallels between Spain and Ontario, in particular, the fact that employment losses in Spain and Ontario were disproportionately larger than employment losses elsewhere in Europe and Canada. So this […]
Most viewed posts in 2011
This is to complement Frances' post on which WCI posts were most liked on Facebook. Here are the ten posts that received the most page views since January 1: The mathematics generation gap This is what a balance-sheet recession looks like, and it's not pretty Dumb men commercials US productivity exceptionalism What's the best way […]
Where will Canada’s growth come from?
The consensus outlook for Canadian economic growth in 2012 is generally tepid, with the possibility of another international financial crisis tipping us into recession as it did in the fall of 2008. After looking over the potential sources of growth, it's easy to see where this consensus came from. One of those data-intensive posts with […]
Some identification problems in the debate on taxing top earners
Two recent papers on top-earner taxation have made an important contribution to the policy debate on the topic, but it seems to me that we still have some way to go before we have an understanding of the phenomenon that is robust enough to use as a basis for policy.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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