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1. Three tricky points for equalization abolitionists

   For as long as equalization has existed (since 1957), Quebec has always received the largest payment. ...

2. What’s good for GM workers isn’t always good for Canada

   The destruction part of “creative destruction” is never fun. Learning just before Christmas that you’ll be losing your job next year, as almost 3,000 workers at General Motors’ Oshawa plant did this week, is hard. And the just-before ...

3. Hope, Crosby and Wilkins on the Road to Micro-Loonie-a

   “A hundred dollars! Nobody’s got a hundred dollars!” The local cable provider is promoting an old-movie channel and that’s a quote from one of the sample clips, which Internet sleuthing persuades me is from the 1941 Bob Hope-Bing Crosby ...

4. To adapt to climate change, end supply management

   How’s that? For economists, there are many good reasons to end supply management, which boils down to political determination of how much milk, chicken, eggs, cheese and now even maple syrup Canada produces. But a new working paper from ...

5. The Bank of Canada gives itself an A- for forecasting

   “First, do no harm” is Rule One in medicine. Until the last couple of centuries, it’s not clear most doctors achieved that goal. Before the mid-19th century, when infection came to be understood, doctors were a very efficient disease ...

6. Productivity accountants miss widespread magic

   “Any sufficiently advanced technology,” said the science/science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, “is indistinguishable from magic.” I get that quote from the podcast of The John Batchelor Show, where a tech company uses it in its ...

7. Will the CAI solve our climate-policy problem and end eco-micro-management?

   The CAI. Not the CIA, which may or may not be working on our climate-policy problem, who knows? It works on lots of things so it may be working on that, too. Rather, the CAI is the Trudeau government’s new “Climate Action Incentive,” ...

8. Competitiveness by the numbers is only partly helpful

   The self-appointed but now also semi-institutionalized World Economic Forum, progenitor of “Davos Man,” published its Global Competitiveness Report for 2018 this week. The United States came first, scoring 85.6 points out of a possible ...

9. Nordhaus, the Nobel, Harper, economics and populism

   Trade is good for both countries, but not everyone in both countries benefits from trade. ...

10. ‘Six months’ notice’ and The Art of the Squeeze

    Brian Mulroney: Mr. Turner, with a document that is cancellable on six months’ notice? Be serious… Please, be serious. John Turner: Well I have never been more serious in my life. Brian Mulroney: Please, please. That was the final ...