It has been a week of immersion in health economics for me. Last Friday, we had Herb Emery from Calgary visiting Lakehead and he gave a seminar presentation on generational balance and public health care spending in Canada. I also just got back from a workshop on health expenditure forecasting and along with last Friday’s […]
My last post was about whether money was a liability of the issuer. Lee Kelly, in a comment, summed up my thoughts: "Base money isn't really a liability of the central bank, but good monetary policy usually involves pretending that it is, e.g. by instituting a nominal GDP or inflation target." The Bank of Canada […]
I've created some videos (screen recordings) for my third year taxation course, showing how to download data from CANSIM, adjust it for inflation, and do some other basic analysis.
I waved a $20 note in front of my macro class this morning. I said: "Is this a liability of the Bank of Canada?". They all answered "Yes". That's what we teach them. We draw a balance sheet for the Bank of Canada. We put the government bonds it owns on the asset side, and […]
One of the (many!) important questions raised by the robocall scandal is whether or not the deceptive calls did in fact achieve their presumed goal of inducing supporters of opposition parties to stay home and not vote. If you look at riding-level data, there's not much to see. But Simon Fraser University's Anke Kessler has […]
It's budget season, and there's a federal deficit to worry about. The government wants to cut spending, and the opposition parties want to increase taxes on high earners as well as corporate income taxes (CIT) instead. (No-one wants to increase the GST.) In a recent Economy Lab post, I went through the arithmetic of calculating […]
I became a feminist because I wanted to be free: to go for long walks and look up the stars, to wear whatever I wanted, to be able to look after myself and not have to rely on others. I've lived my life in a time and place where I've been able to have those […]
Recent reports suggest that the federal government may be seeing some improvements on the deficit front due to increases in revenue. However, no such luck seems to be gracing Ontario. Indeed, the Drummond’s report forecast of continued lackluster revenue growth for Ontario due to its weak economy has placed Ontario’s government in a bind.
Some goods are easy to buy and sell quickly. They are liquid. Other goods are harder to buy and sell quickly. They are illiquid. Some goods' prices adjust quickly to changes in demand and supply. They have flexible prices. Other goods' prices adjust slowly to changes in demand and supply. They have sticky prices. 1. […]
Imagine it was possible to travel back in time, and tell the policy makers of the past everything that we now know about pay as you go pension (PAYG) plans. Life expectancies will increase, birth rates will fall, and the contributions required to sustain the schemes will grow. PAYG pensions will be blamed for discouraging savings, […]
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