Posts by Author

The way of the world in recent and present time is the preach and the practice of neoliberalism, of pushing markets to their extremes. The Turkish writer and political analyst Ece Temelkuran in her new book How to Lose a Country: the Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship, draws on her Turkish experience and applies its lesson elsewhere, notably to […]

Can anyone out there help me? Just saw a headline on CNN saying that, in spite of Brexit chaos, unemployment was at an historic low. Likewise in US where in spite of Trump — could it really be because of? — unemployment is also at an historic low. Reminds me that back in the late 1970s there was a G-7 […]

Post the Second World War, the US became dominant in the world economy and a shift from coal to oil was deliberately taken by the state to weaken the power of coal-centred industrialization and tie the Middle East into American and European control. Transport of oil by pipeline and tanker created a fluidity that tended to eliminate nodal points where […]

The opening sentence of the 2011 book, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil by the historian Timothy Mitchell, reads “Fossil fuels helped create both the possibility of modern democracy and its limits.” Carbon democracy is “a certain kind of democratic politics.” He observes: “Countries that depend upon petroleum resources for a large part of their earnings from […]

That’s the actual title of a recent book (2015) by Robert E. Babe, who has a doctorate in economics and is professor of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. The sub-title is Media, Power, and Democracy. Harold Innis you know. If you don’t, get with the required reading. Noam Chomsky everybody knows. So who is Wilbur […]

That’s what the political theorist C.B. Macpherson (1911-1987) saw emerging historically with the rise of capitalism. Frank Cunningham in his just published intellectual biography of Macpherson, The Political Thought of C.B. Macpherson: Contemporary Applications describes possessive individualism as “The individual is proprietor of his own person, for which he owes nothing to society”. That sounds like an apt description of […]

Remarks at a posthumous book launch of his Myth, Mind and Religion at Massey College, University of Toronto, October 2018 For more than 50 years, going back to the days of the old Department of Political Economy, Abe was my colleague in teaching and researching economic history and political economy, my intellectual soulmate, and my closest friend. I have many […]

There’s an exceptional opportunity for a bright and critical-minded economist who is as passionate about social justice and working on behalf of unions and working people as they are about working with spreadsheets: CLC Senior Economist. Application deadline September 21st.   More details and job posting here.

On May 28th, 61 Canadian economists (myself included) signed the following letter urging the federal government to instruct the Bank of Canada to consider full employment and not only inflation when conducting interest rate decisions.  It was through the great organization of Mario Seccareccia that this was made possible and has received reviews by several media commentators, notably Barrie McKenna and Neil […]

The Progressive Economics Forum is pleased to announce Jim Stanford as the winner of the 2018 Galbraith Prize in Economics. The selection committee included Fletcher Baragar (Manitoba), Hassan Bougrine (Laurentian), Toby Sanger (Canadian Union of Public Employees), Christine Saulnier (CCPA-NS) and Kevin Young (University of Massachusetts at Amherst), and was chaired by David Pringle (PEF). Jim has accepted the Prize […]

(March 20, 2018-Edmonton) Today, a coalition of researchers, economists, and members of civil society released an alternative budget to boost Alberta’s economic growth while reducing income inequality. “Alberta is on the road to recovery after a deep recession,” said economist Nick Falvo, “now is not the time to reverse the course.” The document, High Stakes, Clear Choices, sets a progressive […]

That is the well chosen title of a marvelous new book by Gerry Helleiner,  sub-titled Memoirs of a Life in International and Development Economics. Helleiner, from his home base at the University of Toronto, tells us in this most readable book, in his own modest way, the stories, notably from Africa, of how he devoted his life as an economist to […]

It’s been over a week now since I challenged the authors of 5 business-friendly economic reports to a friendly wager over the future trajectory of employment in provinces that are raising their minimum wage to $15 per hour.  The challenge was issued in my Globe and Mail column of October 3. I was responding to the several business groups and […]

The Review of Keynesian Economics and the Progressive Economic Forum are sponsoring a “Post-Keynesian Summer School”, to be held on the campus of the University of Toronto, June 23-25, 2017, and featuring leading post-Keynesian scholars from Canada, the US, and Europe. The summer school is aims at both undergraduate and graduate students, and registration is only $25 US per person, […]

The Review of Keynesian Economics (ROKE) and the Progressive Economic Forum (PEF) are hosting a: “Post-Keynesian Summer School”, on the campus of the University of Toronto, June 23-25, 2017. Over 2 and a half days, the summer school will introduce students to post-Keynesian economics, both theory and policy, and will feature some of the biggest names in post-Keynesian economics.  Registration […]

Abridged Text of Remarks to Panel on Canadian Political Economy in Commemoration of Abraham Rotstein and Stephen Clarkson, Department of Political Science, September 16 2016 Let us cast our minds back to the decade of the 1960 – which I recall as the best of times – as the time of the transformation of the old Political Economy centered on […]

In the end, what was meant to be a referendum about the economic benefits of remaining in the European Union, was about everything but. There will be countless analyses of the results and of the reasons that motivated the British people to vote to leave the European Union. But in the end, I fear that very few of these analyses […]

There were two great Canadian economists of the last century: H.A. Innis and W.A. Mackintosh. Innis had been much written about but not Mackintosh. This is now corrected by a thoroughly researched biography by Hugh Grant of the University of Winnipeg with the straightforward title W.A. Mackintosh: The Life of a Canadian economist. Mackintosh was both a distinguished scholar and […]

The massive change dealt by Canadian voters to the seating arrangement in the House of Commons last Monday has seen the 3rd party Liberals leap to a majority government, sending the incumbent Conservatives across the aisle to the Official Opposition bench and the once-hopeful NDP back to the 3rd party seats.  In addition to the disappointment of being reduced from […]

Greece and the death of economics, and democracy, and civility, and so much more Louis-Philippe Rochon Associate Professor of Economics, Laurentian University Co-editor, Review of Keynesian Economics Irrespective of whether it was total capitulation, there are already a multitude of analyses trying to decipher what (and how) exactly happened in Greece and whether it could have been avoided. Countless opinions […]