The Conference Board has just released a report entitled "CanCompete: Re-Energizing Canada’s International Trade—Strategies for Post-Recession Success," available here. In its summary of recent trade patterns for Canada, it notes that Canadian exports grew because these goods increased in value rather than because Canada sold more goods and services abroad. This is a true and […]

From Don Newmans's recent column: A government that is serious about dealing with the problem should be encouraging public hearings where respected economists like Don Drummond, Dale Orr, Bill Robson, Mike McCracken and Jim Stanford would spell out in detail the scope of the problems and the choices that will have to be made to […]

One of the highlights of my graduate school years was the lecture where I learned about Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. It's hard to imagine an question more important to the social sciences that the social choice problem: how can we aggregate individual preferences into a coherent social order? Arrow's answer is that we can't, but that […]

The Globe and Mail's Kevin Carmichael called me yesterday to talk about the idea that Canada's recovery won't be fully underway until exports started to increase at a significant rate. My comments didn't make the cut for the print edition, but they are in the online version of the story: Not all economists are convinced […]

In an upcoming post, I'm going to try to thrash out some of the details about the origins of the federal budget deficit, with an idea to figuring out how to make it go whence it came. But first, I'm going to set out some historical background, now that the data from the 2008-9 fiscal […]

Blogging will be light-to-non-existent until after July 16.

I’m a Professor of Economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. I’m also a member of the CD Howe Institute’s Monetary Policy Council and the Centre for Monetary and Financial Economics.

I’m a professor of economics at l’Université Laval in Quebec City, Canada and a fellow of the Centre interuniversitaire sur le risque, les politiques économiques et l’emploi (CIRPÉE).

If the images of 200,000-plus Berliners crowding to see Barack Obama seemed surprising to US observers, they shouldn’t have been. Outside the US, it’s hard to imagine why the US presidential election should even be close. Environics: A massive majority of Canadians would like to see Senator Barack Obama win the American presidential election to […]

January average daily maximum temperature in Moscow: -6.2C (20.8F) in Quebec City: -7.4C (18.7F) Attracting promising scholars is a challenge in itself. But most other departments don’t have to make their pitch while the candidate is shivering in a paper-thin trench coat and street shoes.