Some missing elements from the Canadian TPP debate
With an agreement reached on the Trans Pacific Partnership, the 12-member trade and investment treaty, opinions began swirling about what the deal means for the future of Canada. Plenty of…
investment
New Study on Positive Economic Impacts of Public Infrastructure Investment in Canada
A five-year $50-billion public infrastructure spending initiative would generate a return on investment to Canadians over the long term as high as $3.83 per dollar spent, trigger significant private sector…
Repeat after me: Alberta isn’t Greece
Last week it was Andrew Coyne; this week it’s Jack Mintz. Seems all the National Post’s favourite conservative commentators have suddenly decided to offer their Very Serious Advice™ to Alberta’s…
Podcast: JW Mason on business not investing, still disgorging the cash
https://politicalehconomy.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/podcast150420-jw-mason.mp3 This week’s podcast is a bit more economics-focused than usual but gets at the heart of what’s going on in the global economy where interest rates are near, at,…
On value assessments
The Great Budget Debate at the Progress Summit of course reflected a thorough clash in values. But there was one note of obvious agreement which makes the conservative position untenable…
Grocery Wars: Lessons from Canada’s Changing Retail Landscape
As Target Canada tumbled into bankruptcy, Loblaw announced that its fourth-quarter profits more than doubled. What can be learned from this tale of two retailers? The main reason for Loblaw’s…
Friday Afternoon Links
This and that to start your weekend. – Robert Reich discusses how the increasing concentration of corporate wealth and power is undermining the U.S.’ democracy, while noting that there’s only…
Morocco Leads in Cutting Subsidies to Oil and Gas Industries
Oil and gas companies get a ton of subsidies from governments which holds back the adoption of renewable energy. In most countries, the gas industry is supported by policies encourage…
The outsize (un)importance of the tarsands
It’s easy to overestimate the importance of the tar sands to the Canadian economy. Tar sands and their pipelines are after all hailed by the ruling Conservatives, sections of the…
Forget global superstar, Vancouver’s housing troubles start at home
Vancouver was the star of a recent New Yorker article that shone a light on the city’s lack of housing affordability and linked this lack to an inflow of foreign…
The Purpose Economy
Triple-bottom line companies and other terms that describe companies that focus on more than just profit keep coming. The most recent is what is no referred to as the purpose…
Digital Endowment
Highlight Image: Highlight Link: https://openmedia.ca/endowment
Corporate Olympics: Profit Sprint vs. Investment Crawl
Statistics Canada reported today that private and public investment intentions are up by 1.4% for 2014, even weaker than Canada’s investment growth of 1.5% in 2013. Private-sector investment intentions are…
Britain’s, Not France’s, Middle Class Is Being ‘Run Into The Dust’
http://www.social-europe.eu/2014/02/middle-class/ Filed under: Capitalism Tagged: Britain, Capitalism, France, investment, productivity
Austerity and the profitability puzzle: government gives profits a helping hand
This is the third and final post in what has become a three-part series on the puzzle of high profitability and low investment in the Canadian economy. In the first…
PEF Session at the House of Commons Finance Committee
The Progressive Economics Forum (PEF) normally hosts sessions at the Canadian Economics Association’s annual conference. But the House of Commons finance committee threw most of the union economists testifying in…
Black Friday GDP: Consumption Slows, But Inventories Jump
Ironically, Statistics Canada’s third-quarter GDP report on Black Friday showed the growth rate of consumption being cut in half. Final consumption expenditure grew by 0.4% in the third quarter compared…
Good Time to Rethink Corporate Tax Cuts
Canada’s macroeconomy continues to be lethargic at best, and there is growing recognition that the continuing sluggishness of business capital spending since the 2008-09 crisis is a big part of…
Do C. D. Howe’s Numbers Support its Policies?
The basic storyline of today’s C. D. Howe Institute “E-Brief”, “Canada Lagging Peers in 2013 Business Investment Growth,” is that corporate tax cuts helped boost investment per worker in Canada…