Fresh off of getting cut off mid-presentation by an uptight Conservative, who we discovered later was only following orders, Gord Laxer makes his case: Easterners could freeze in the dark GORDON LAXER … while Canada, as part of our bilateral Security and Prosperity Partnership initiative, supports U.S. efforts to wean itself off Middle Eastern oil, I noted that we do […]
Read moreAsks David Crane in today’s Toronto Star. Between the lines I read that the feds need to stop listening to whining corporate elites, whose cries inevitably come back to tax cuts, deregulation, more “free trade” (investor rights) deals and reduced public services as the means to “competitiveness”. Crane suggests a federal approach based on a little thing we used to […]
Read moreA week before the Canadian Economics Association meeting, the article in the Nation looks at the plight of heterodox economics south of the border. There are a lot of parallels to Canada, but some differences, too. At the CEA meetings, Progressive Economics Forum sessions have generally been very well attended (we’ll see how this year goes), and the PEF received […]
Read moreSachs’ article below suggests that China’s growing influence on the world stage may well signal the end of neoliberalism. That ideological framework of monetarism, liberalization, deregulation and privatization was imposed through structural adjustment programs, mostly in Latin America and Africa, with terrible results. Meanwhile, most Asian countries flouted those policy prescriptions en route to steller economic gains (the 1997-98 Asian […]
Read moreA year ago, I was concerned that the Harper government, in the name of “fixing” the “fiscal imbalance”, would endorse ideas coming from the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the CD Howe Institute for a radical decentralization of fiscal federalism. This would have entailed eliminating the non-equalization transfers to the provinces (that fund health care, post-secondary education and social […]
Read moreThe educational homogamy meme has put a burr under my saddle. While I do think it is an important element in understanding inequality trends, what concerns me is the insinuation that this explains most of the rise in inequality, a position taken by Margaret Wente and William Watson to sound off that there is nothing we can do. Guess what? […]
Read moreIt seems pretty simple to me: if you do not want to have to deal with pesky shareholders and all of their questioning your personal use of the company’s private jet and New York condo, take “your company” private. Then you can fill your boots on the company account as much as you want because it is your company. You […]
Read moreBased on conversations among Canada’s top capitalists (and their heirs), the Conrad Black trial revealed this interesting insider look at their rather incestuous dealings. Much of the article is written around takes on then-PM Chretien, but I find most interesting what this tells us about the real economics of media empires (original here). In the end, Black and Asper turned […]
Read moreHugh Mackenzie’s piece on gas price gouging set off a chain reaction in the mass media. The oil execs were scrambling to come up with any and all excuses to justify their outrageous abuse of market power, and their even more outrageous profits. The lame response essentially boils down to this: it’s just market forces. Indeed, it is just “the […]
Read moreBack when I worked for Industry Canada in the mid-1990s, I sat on an internal panel that reviewed the applications for digital cellular telephony (what was then called PCS, or Personal Communications Systems). It was an interesting experience, including getting fingerprinted by the RCMP to get Secret security clearance. We basically chose to license a number of new carriers to […]
Read moreThe Canadian Economics Association annual conference is just ten days away. Writers are furiously writing up their papers for presentation (or like me, are procrastinating until the pressure builds); discussants are plotting clever things to say in response to those papers; and others are just figuring out where they will be sleeping in Halifax. As in the past, the Progressive […]
Read morePaul Krugman takes on deregulation in the US, sounding a lot like a CCPA research associate. In a research paper released last year, Bruce Campbell and I contemplated deregulation in the Great White North (dubbed “smart regulation” by the previous Liberal government) and a current obsession of our policy elites, regulatory harmonization (dubbed “cooperation”). We made the case that harmonizing […]
Read moreWhile William Watson and Margaret Wente are shrugging their shoulders at growing inequality in Canada, and endorsing policies that would make our income distribution more like that of our southern neighbour, concerns in the US about rising inequality are actually getting a better hearing. An example is the following article in Business Week (The Poverty Business: Inside U.S. companies’ audacious […]
Read moreSome more interesting factoids about congestion charging as NYC contemplates on of its own. Critics are correct to point out the regressive aspects of congestion charges, that they have the potential to price out all but the most affluent. On the other hand, the poorest do not own cars and are much more reliant on public transit. Ultimately, we have […]
Read moreBoth Erin Weir and I gave testimony to the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce in the past 24 hours, and I think we made an impression by challenging their assumptions about “interprovincial trade barriers” and bogus “solutions” like TILMA. My testimony follows: Presentation to the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce By Marc Lee, Senior Economist Canadian […]
Read moreAll economists are always in support of “free trade” all of the time, right? Some interestings conversations are happening in the econo-blogs about international trade theory and reality. First, I love how Dani Rodrick is challenges the conventional wisdom on international trade: One of my favorite stylized facts about development is contained in the graph below, which comes from a […]
Read moreI get the Daily from Statistics Canada in my email each morning, and periodically they report on “crushing statistics”, which I believe refers to the production of vegetable oils and such (I’m no farmer). Statistics Canada today released its Census of Agriculture, and it probably should also bear the title “crushing statistics”. Between the lines of the summary in The […]
Read moreCopyright has always been pitched as striking a balance between the rights of creators to make a living off their work and the rights of the general public and future generations to benefit from that work. In recent decades, as big corporations have replaced actual creators as owners of many copyrighted works, the balance has been lost, tilted heavily towards […]
Read moreAn Ontario citizens’ assembly on electoral reform has come out in favour of a form of proportional representation known as mixed-member-proportional voting, or MMP. The Ontario Premier says it will be put to the people and will require a popular vote of more than 60%, which arguably makes sense for something as important as changing the voting system (though PR […]
Read moreTwo articles below look at two major items exempted from the Kyoto Protocol: air travel and deforestation. First, the Independent looks at the emission impacts of deforestation in poor countries (though emphasizing that air travel accounts for only a very small percentage of global emissions). Second, the Globe comments that despite its small share of the total, air travel is […]
Read moreI lumped it up yesterday when my fill-up closed at just shy of $50. After all, gas should be expensive, as a means of encouraging us to drive less. But what if the main reason for the hefty increases is gouging by oil and gas companies? It’s one thing for governments to reap the gains of higher prices if they […]
Read moreUBC’s Max Cameron (who wrote a great book on NAFTA back in the day) looks at endemic corruption in Latin America; in this case, a Peruvian congresswoman who put her maid on congressional payroll as a “political advisor”. (As an aside, those back east might be interested to learn about a major corruption trial underway in BC right now involving […]
Read moreA dispatch from Ellen Gould that is a bit nebulous on the surface: Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua are withdrawing from the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Ellen explains: It’s a little bit complicated to understand why this is such fantastically positive news, but this development basically means Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela are making it far more difficult […]
Read moreIn our paper, Putting Canadians at Risk, Bruce Campbell and I feared that lowering our regulatory standards would inevitably happen under the banner of “regulatory cooperation” with the US, something senior government officials think is just great. While this might look like typical Harper policy, it is really just a continuation of an initiative that gained steam under the Martin […]
Read moreSo just as I was about to leave to give a lecture on taxes (and why high tax Nordic countries are not in economic ruins), my tax return for 2006 arrived in the mail. This is truly good news because I got a big refund. In all, I paid about 20% of my income in taxes last year, which seems […]
Read moreIn a column written before this weekend’s presidential run-offs, Mark Weisbrot unspins the misleading numbers behind the French elections: Economic Misinformation Plays a Major Role in French Election The elections in France demonstrate the power of faulty economic analysis, and more generalized problems with arithmetic, to shape ideas and possibly the future of not only a nation, but a continent. […]
Read morePerhaps telegraphing some of his coming remarks in Halifax when he joins the Progressive Economics Forum for the inauguration of the John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, James Galbraith reflects on his father’s The New Industrial State. If you find yourself in Halifax on June 3, noon, please join us at Dalhousie’s McCain Building, Room 2017 (note this is a […]
Read moreDani Rodrik says it is much better to be poor in a rich country than it is to be rich in a poor country (top and bottom deciles, that is, for “rich” and “poor”): The correct answer is that a poor person in a rich country is three times better off than a rich person in a poor country (given […]
Read moreNaomi Klein takes a look past Wolfowitz to the real corruption at the World Bank: World Bank sullied before Wolfowitz It’s not the act itself; it’s the hypocrisy. That’s the line on Paul Wolfowitz, coming from editorial pages around the world. But it’s neither the act (disregarding the rules to get his girlfriend a pay raise) nor the […]
Read moreOut of the blue yesterday I got a call from the Chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, Jerahmiel S. Grafstein. An honour, I suppose, because he was personally inviting me to testify before the committee on interprovincial trade barriers. I was somewhat caught by surprise and had no idea who he was (turns out he’s a […]
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