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 […]
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.
When I was an undergraduate, I remember hearing the following argument from a very smart non-economics student friend of mine: There is no real benefit to lowering income taxes – it’s an illusion. Yes, if income taxes are lowered, people might decide to work more overtime. But what would they be doing with that time […]
I'm scared again. I haven't felt this scared for over a year. Things were starting to look better, in Canada in particular, but around the world more generally. Now Greek bond yields are shooting up. I was worried about the Eurozone in January 2009. And again in December. Maybe it was just my Euroskeptic "Anglo-Saxon" […]
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montreal. Brad DeLong is a very smart guy who writes something like 2,000 blog posts a year. But I have to correct him on a recent one….. The topic is financial regulation and what people knew in the 90s versus what we know now. Part of […]
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 […]
This post was written by Simon van Norden of HEC-Montréal. The news last week that the SEC was filing charges against Goldman Sachs was a bombshell; it dominated the day's headlines and continues to fill blog-space. As it happens, that announcement came the same day as a report that the SEC would prefer that everyone […]
Bank of Canada maintains overnight rate target at 1/4 per cent; removes conditional commitment. Now what? The Bank of Canada tries to avoid surprises when it can, and increasing interest rates when it has made a commitment not to would constitute a surprise. So removing the commitment – which itself it not much of a […]
"An increase in the minimum wage will raise workers' incomes, which will increase aggregate demand, which will increase output and employment. So would an increase in union wages." I remember hearing that argument a lot in the 1970s. You don't hear it as much nowadays, but it still lives on in the underworld of economic […]
Stephen Williamson has started a blog, and has hit the ground running: I count 12 posts since his first post on April 2. Although his current position is at Washington University in St Louis MO, a quick glance at his bio page will explain why I have no compunction about claiming him as one of […]
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